Celtic’s offer for Dinko Horkas ‘isn’t attractive’ says the Las Palmas president. Four million, paid over four years?? Jesus wept…

Well, well, well…

We finally made an offer for somebody.

Stop the bus.

Celtic have gone in for Dinko Horkas, the Las Palmas goalkeeper, and for once we are not ‘monitoring the situation’ or ‘keeping tabs on’ anybody.

There is an actual bid, on an actual table, in front of actual people.

And I would love to tell you that this is the moment the club finally grew up.

I really would.

Because we didn’t just get knocked back – we got laughed at in a Spanish newspaper.

Las Palmas president Miguel Angel Ramirez went and spoke to Tinta Amarilla about it, and the Daily Record carried it here.

Here is what the man said, and I would ask you to sit down first:

“Dinko Horkas is a UD Las Palmas player who has asked to leave the club.

“The club won’t let him go because the only offer we have [from Celtic] isn’t attractive to the club.

“He says it will be difficult for him to continue playing for UD Las Palmas since he had an offer from Saudi, that would have been a lifesaver.

“Horkas says he doesn’t feel strong or motivated to be on the team. But we have other ways he can contribute to help the team. If he doesn’t want to play, he can still help us mark the pitch or put up the nets.

“He has a contract with UD Las Palmas and will stay at the club if the offer he has doesn’t meet UD Las Palmas’ expectations.”

Read that back.

The only offer they have received for this goalkeeper is ours.

Nobody else is in.

No bidding war, no competing suitor, nobody.

The player has downed tools, told his own president he isn’t motivated, and is openly pining for a Saudi move that collapsed.

He is so keen to leave that his own club are threatening to have him putting the nets up.

We have an open goal, an unhappy keeper and zero competition.

And we still managed to get told our money isn’t attractive.

So what exactly did we offer?

Ramirez told them that too, because of course he did.

Las Palmas want five million, plus fifty per cent of any future sale.

Celtic have offered four million.

Paid over four years.

Four years!!

That is one million a year for a goalkeeper.

This isn’t a transfer, that is a car finance agreement.

That is Celtic Football Club, sitting on the kind of cash reserves that make English clubs weep, going into a negotiation with a Segunda Division side and asking to pay in instalments.

Like a man buying a three piece suite off the telly.

Every pound is a prisoner for the double billionaire, and now the prisoners are being released one a year, in twelve month sentences.

I shit you not, this is the strategy.

And the gap here is a single million – on a deal nobody else on earth is bidding for.

One million.

That is the difference between the club that owns him and the club that wants him.

Remember Adam Idah going from £6 million to £9 million because we haggled?

Remember Arne Engels going from £8 million to £11 million because we haggled?

And lest we forget…

Remember John McGinn walking to Aston Villa over a couple of hundred grand?

It was ever thus.

We are not bad at negotiating because we are poor.

We are bad at negotiating because somebody in Barbados has decided that a footballer is worth what he says a footballer is worth, and the men in Glasgow are paid handsomely to relay the message with a straight face.

Silent Mike doesn’t negotiate.

Silent Mike delivers a number.

There is a difference, and Ramirez has just explained that difference to an entire Spanish readership.

Then came the best bit of all – the briefing.

Because within hours of that going out, we were told that Celtic ‘sources’ had poured cold water on the whole thing.

Not interested, apparently.

Prioritising other positions, apparently.

Funny that.

The offer was real enough to be sitting on a president’s desk, real enough for him to quote the terms of it word for word, but the second it makes us look cheap, our media partners are handed a line about how we were never that bothered anyway.

Operation Arse Covering, right on schedule.

And who exactly are these ‘other positions’ we are prioritising?

Because Paolo Bernardo’s exit took the number of departures in this window to 15.

Fifteen out.

A handful in.

If we are prioritising other positions, we are hiding it well.

Meanwhile, the position we apparently aren’t prioritising is goalkeeper.

Kasper Schmeichel retired at the end of last season after his injury problems.

So Viljami Sinisalo is our number one for the campaign.

Ross Doohan is the cover.

That’s it.

That’s the department.

Two keepers, one of whom has never carried a title-winning season on his own, and a board that has just been publicly told its money isn’t good enough by a club in the Spanish second tier.

I wrote yesterday that agents only play Celtic like a fiddle because Silent Mike hands them the bow.

Well, now the selling clubs have picked the bow up as well.

Give credit where credit is due – if Nicholson goes back tomorrow, finds the extra million, pays it up front like a grown-up and gets the deal over the line, I will be first in the queue to say fair play to the man.

But we all know what happens next, don’t we?

We will sit on our four million.

Las Palmas will sit on their five million.

Horkas will spend August marking out the eighteen yard box in Gran Canaria.

And in three weeks we will be told the club has ‘moved on to other targets’.

Targets we do not have.

Same routine, different keeper.

It really is getting wearing now…

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Last night, I appeared on the Bhoycie Bus, where we discussed this very subject. You can catch it all below: