Brendan Rodgers has made it crystal clear that Adam Idah can’t be sold by Celtic before a replacement striker is signed.
While the Celtic boss was setting out his stance Sky Sports News are reporting that the striker is undergoing a medical ahead of joining Swansea City.
A player only undergoes a medical if terms have been agreed for his transfer, if anything sums up the confusion and conflicting interests at Celtic the position of Idah seems to sum it up.
While Rodgers faces the media every few days Michael Nicholson works away from the public eye, boosting the bank balance to the detriment of the team where is seems the club is proactive in trying to sell off first team regulars on long term contracts.
The first question at today’s media conference was about Idah.
QUESTION: Can we get an update on Adam Idah’s future? I believe he’s away down to have a medical at Swansea. Is that correct?
RODGERS: There’s interest in Adam but, obviously, no one can leave here unless we get players in to replace. It’s as simple as that. There’s been negotiations and chatter around it, but I have to have players in here before I can consider letting anyone go.
QUESTION: Is that a big concern just given the fact that you’ve been wanting to strengthen your front line for quite a while now and there’s now talk of potentially Adam and I think there was a link to Yang in Birmingham today as well?
RODGERS: It’s been ongoing for Yang for a little while. I understand that when you’re a player that’s probably been mostly used as a squad player over a couple of years, there comes a point in time and then you maybe want to move on and play.
But I’ve been unable to do that because we’ve needed Yang here. I also know that if he does stay, he has a contribution to make because we need five, six wingers because of the number of games we play, the intensity that we want to play. But there has been interest in him. Yet again, I repeat, I can’t really do anything unless we have players in.
QUESTION: There’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to Adam. Obviously a big game on Sunday. Do you know whether you’ll have him available or not definitively either way?
RODGERS: Adam had been out for a number of days before the last game and came in. I’m quite relaxed on that. I just need to see what we’re at over the course of next couple of days and then we’ll just we’ll assess it from there.
At 9am Sky Sports reported
Idah undergoing Swansea medical
Latest from Sky Sports News’ Anthony Joseph:
Celtic striker Adam Idah is undergoing a medical ahead of his £7m move to Swansea City.
The clubs have agreed a deal for the Ireland international, who said his goodbyes to his Celtic teammates last night.
Idah has verbally agreed terms with Swansea and will finalise the paperwork on his contract, once his medical is completed.
At 4.18pm they added:
Sky Sports News reported Idah was in Wales for a medical ahead of a move worth up to £7m, while winger Hyun-Jun Yang has been linked with Birmingham.
There is a small area of overlap where Celtic may be bringing in a striker at exactly the same time as Idah is moving to Swansea but there is clearly different messages around the club.
Rodgers is the public face of the club trying to build a team to progress and challenge for honours while Nicholson is happy to sell off players regardless of their position and the timing in the transfer window.
If the CEO really wants to sell off players he would do less harm by moving on a midfielder, an area of the pitch where Celtic have six options for three places.
Idah is the only first team ready striker, Daizen Maeda is preferred as a left winger, until the arrival of Michel-Ange Balikwisha Maeda was the only left winger at the club.
The striker issue has been haunting Celtic since Kyogo Furuhashi was sold to Rennes in January with no attempt made to bring in a replacement.
Despite his big game goals, effectively denying Phil Clement a treble in his first season at Ibrox, Idah has been used by many Celtic fans to criticise Rodgers and his signings.
It seems that signing duds costing £2-3m like Marco Tilio, Yang Hjun-jun, Luis Palma and Kwon Hyeok-kyu is par for the course but that a £9m striker has to deliver 30 plus goals.
Idah’s price tag is entirely down to Michael Nicholson’s lack of negotiating skills. After his success on loan Celtic failed with a succession of offers to Norwich who knew that the hoops had no alternative strikers in the pipeline.
When Kyogo suffered a shoulder injury in the second match of last season the need for a striker became overwhelming with Norwich doing business at £9m for the guy that started the year as their third choice striker.
Idah scored 20 goals last season including three in the Champions League. He also created the match-winning own goal from YB Bern in Celtic’s decisive Champions League tie and scored in the penalty shoot out win in the League Cup Final but that wasn’t good enough for his critics as they followed instructions.
After the post Kyogo struggles it seems mad for Celtic to be pushing to sell their remaining first team ready striker with just four days left in the transfer window.
Johnny Kenny, Shin Yamada and Callum Osmond are around the first team squad but none of those three has completed a full 90 minutes, Kenny has scored two first team goals with the others yet to score for Celtic, Osmond hasn’t played a first team minute in his career.
Rodgers made his stance very clear today on losing players, in the background there is speculation over the future of Maeda, from today’s comments the Celtic boss has laid down his marker on the future of the Japanese striker.
The Sky Sports yellow ticker looks like being essential viewing for Celtic fans until the window closes with the old claim of finishing stronger than at the start sadly well out of date.
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