Sunday Post Article

[fraser54 0]

A think he is meaning 10m alltogether. That is including already how much we have spent.

[craig 5,199]

Im still not too keen on either Naismith or Whittaker, but the one thing Smith seems to be able to do is mould great spirit and belief into a team.

 

Id still rather go out and get that "better" player - whoever he may be. 3.3 Million should get us someone half decent.

 

But SA is right, should we believe this statement from Murray?

 

I am in a similar frame of mind - would prefer we take the cash available for the 3 players and buy one creative midfielder of genuine quality.

 

Fraser, the figures we are using for Whittaker, Naismith etc are taking into account how much has already been spent - not one of us believe it is an ADDITIONAL 10 mill. Wishful thinking if we were.

[calscot 0]

I presume he is including signing on fees in the 10m total and that it is gross not net.

 

I also presume he's not copying Celtic and including the players' wages in the figure.

[ascender 352]

Still makes you wonder why we don't sort out the Naismith deal if the money is available. Is it now DM's ego getting in the way of going back to Killie?

[calscot 0]

I think part of not agreeing to 2M for Naismith is to prevent us being held to ransom in future. Kilmarnock have upped their fee purely because there have been a couple of other Scots transferred for big money. Their fee is arbitrary and not related to the intrinsic worth of their player.

 

Naismith is not as established as the Hibs pair and is therefore more of a risk. You only have to look at the last big money deal for a young Scottish striker to a club outside Scotland to see a more realistic price - ie O'Connor to Russia for 1.5M.

 

If we continually say, "Name your price and we'll pay it," to Scottish teams then we'll have bugger all money to spend once more.

 

Imagine we spent 2M each on Murray, Rae, Novo, Boyd, Webster, Gow, Broadfoot, Brown and many others.

 

We'd have no money at all.

 

There is not much precedent recently of young Scottish players going for 2M+ beyond the exception of the Hibs pair and there are a few times Rangers have been turned down only for the selling club to get less or nothing later on. Riordan and Webster are good examples.

[ascender 352]

No, I agree with what you're saying. Part of the problem here is that we don't know exactly what happened and who offered what under what terms and why or precisely when Killie moved the goalposts. I do think the SPL young player of the year and second top scorer is worth around 1.5M though, but I think we're all in the dark really about the murky details on this one.

 

He's certainly a player I really wanted to come here, but I have a bad feeling he's going to end up at C*ltic.

[Super_Ally 0]

How much of the >£10mil have we spent then?

 

Cuellar - £2.37mil

McCulloch - £2.25mil

Beasley - £700k

Whittaker - £2mil

 

£7.32 mil I mkae that unless i've missed someone?

 

So around another 3mil(ish).

 

Cousin shouldn't cost that much if he is to arrive (I hope not), so surely that means at least one other lined up?