Celtic back banging on Go Ahead Eagles door for Breum. Let’s hope Chairman Jan Willem van Dop doesn’t hand Silent Mike his a*** on a plate again!
Same player, same selling club, same board. What could possibly go wrong this time??
Eric Knott 
Jakob Breum.
Now there’s a name that brings back memories.
Not good ones, mind you.
Because if you cast your mind back to last summer, the Jakob Breum saga was the defining humiliation of a window that had humiliations to spare.
The headline act in a summer of ‘turfings’, as I called it in my earlier piece today.
And here we are again.
A full year later.
Talking about the exact same player.
You couldn’t make it up.
According to a report in the Glasgow Times, Go Ahead Eagles are now open to offers for our long-time target, and won’t stand in his way.
Stop the bus.
Here’s their technical director, Marc van Hintum, laying out exactly how hard this should be:
“Jakob is only under contract for another year and does not want to sign an extension. That means he is allowed to leave if a good offer comes in, but so far that has not happened. There is nothing concrete happening yet.”
Read that last bit again.
“So far that has not happened.”
“There is nothing concrete happening yet.”
The lad has one year left.
He doesn’t want a new deal.
He’s practically packed his bags and ordered the taxi.
He’s rated at around £4 million.
In modern football, that is loose change down the back of the sofa.
And still, somehow, nothing concrete is happening.
Why would it?
This is Celtic we’re talking about.
The greenlight is on.
The player is willing.
The price is a snip.
And our board are sat there with the engine off, admiring the view.
We chased this boy last summer and got laughed out of Deventer
Let me jog a few memories here.
Last summer, we put in several lowball bids for Breum.
They were laughed at.
Then came the ultimate insult.
Go Ahead Eagles Chairman Jan Willem van Dop went on the record to say that the Ibrox club were a highly professional outfit to deal with, in comparison to Celtic, during their pursuit of Oliver Antman.
The Ibrox club.
More professional than us.
Out of the mouth of the very chairman we were trying to do business with.
Right between the eyes.
And the board, of course, told us they’d ‘learned their lessons’.
They always say that, don’t they??
So riddle me this.
If you’d been publicly told you were a shambles to deal with by a Dutch chairman – and made a laughing stock across European football for it – would you go crawling back to the same man, for the same player, twelve months later??
Master negotiators Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay apparently would.
Back banging on the same door.
Cap in hand.
To the one man on the continent who has already told the world we’re amateurs.
You genuinely could not script this.
Amateurs.
Even the fans can see exactly where this is going
I’m not the only one having flashbacks here.
This dropped on X earlier:
Says it all, really.
Walking straight back into the same fire.
Eyes wide open.
Because we know how this goes, don’t we??
We’ve seen this exact film before.
We’ll ‘keep tabs on’ Breum.
We’ll ‘monitor the situation’.
Then we’ll ‘prepare to make an offer’.
We’ll lob in £3 million, maybe £3.5 million if the absent golfer in Barbados emails his approval back in time.
Van Dop will turf it out.
Are we surprised??
Are we really??
And then we’ll act stunned – absolutely stunned – that a willing seller with a willing player still wouldn’t accept a fee scrawled on the back of a beermat.
Strangely enough, this tactic never seems to work.
But on we go.
It was ever thus.
This is what a total lack of ambition looks like
Here’s the thing that really gets me.
It’s not even that we’re chasing Breum.
He’s a tidy player.
Sixteen Eredivisie goals and eleven assists across the last two seasons isn’t to be sniffed at.
It’s that we’re chasing the very same player we already botched a year ago.
No fresh ambition and no grander vision.
No swinging for the fences.
Just the same name, dusted off, recycled, and trotted back out twelve months later.
Like a manager rehiring the assistant he sacked.
Make no mistake.
Martin O’Neill’s first wave of players reports back to Lennoxtown on Friday for pre-season testing.
And the men charged with actually building him a squad are rummaging through last year’s bargain bin.
Let’s be honest here.
That is an embarrassment.
And don’t get me started on the goalkeeper situation.
We had a sniff at Go Ahead Eagles’ Jari de Busser too, after Kasper Schmeichel hung up his gloves.
He’s just signed for AZ Alkmaar instead.
Of course he has.
Looked at Celtic.
Looked at the alternative.
Chose the alternative.
Another one.
So here’s my one and only hope for this whole sorry saga.
Just don’t embarrass us again.
That’s it.
That’s the bar.
We’re not asking the board to be world-beaters here.
We’re asking them not to hand Jan Willem van Dop the chance to make a fool of us for a second successive summer.
The warnings are already raining down, and this board has never heeded a single one of them.
Don’t bet on it.
Get it sorted.
Clowns.
Key Takeaways
- Jakob Breum has resurfaced as a target for Celtic, a year after their failed attempts to sign him.
- The Go Ahead Eagles are now open to offers for Breum, but despite interest, no concrete action has taken place.
- Celtic’s board seems reluctant to take decisive steps, causing frustration among fans who see past missteps repeating.
- The management appears to lack ambition, targeting a player they previously failed to secure, creating a cycle of disappointment.
- Fans hope the board avoids further embarrassment in their pursuit of Breum, but doubts linger about their commitment.
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Bhoycie 
Aodhán Ó Conchobhair 
We know all of this as you told us a year ago. But you love it because it lets you continue trashing Celtic. You and most of the fan media take almost all that comes from Celtic and put a negative spin on it. Celtic should absolutely listen to you all since you are all experts and experienced in running a football club dealing with transfers, player agents. All aspects of the business.AND THE MSM ARE LOVING IT.
You have lost sight of the objective of the collective and spew hate at the club.
I read in news now frequently Celtic are taking with clubs and agents and you know not every player wants to come to this league. I wonder why. Try some positives Eric you will feel good.