You start the day off with some positive Arsenal news and within just a few hours you soon start kicking yourself for falling into the trap of believing in fairy tales.
If there is one thing that is never straightforward it is Arsenal doing transfers. They are the masters of turning a simple situation into a melodrama.
The club haggled and hesitated over the William Saliba deal and now run the risk of missing out on the 18-year-old and rather than learn from their mistakes they appear to be doing exactly the same with the Kieran Tierney transfer saga.
The key phrase there being
“It is complicated by the breakdown and nature of the instalments Arsenal are proposing”
Of course it is, why wouldn’t it be? It is Arsenal after all.
This is the sort of messing around that let’s other clubs in and remember Napoli are interested.
Celtic want £25 Million, they want it all, they want it now, they do not want it in instalments with complicated structures.
If Napoli are genuinely interested and they see this going on, which they will of course, then they now know that to get Tierney all they got to do is pay the £25 Million in one go.
I understand that the club probably has little choice but to continue to try and seek to pay in instalments because of the dire state of the finances but Celtic won’t be caring about that and they will sell to whichever club is prepared to pay the money in one go.
Maybe I am being harsh here but in all fairness can anyone blame me, it seems that deal after deal is falling through the cracks because we just cannot seem to get a deal over the line.
We will not get Wilfried Zaha, we risk losing William Saliba and if we are not careful we will miss out on Tierney.
But, I will take some confidence in Ornstein’s final words.
“but there remains optimism that the transfer will be completed”
Just hope I am not setting myself up to have my hopes dashed once again.