Gers should grab Greg but Jordan just isn’t worth it
Monday mornings at Clyde always began with a dressing-room quiz.
Former Nottingham Forest midfielder Martin Clark would get someone to shout out fixtures from the weekend results page and he’d guess the attendance.
It was a remarkable display of anorak behaviour but he would more often than not get within a punter or two of calling even the most obscure match on the British football diary correctly.
Martin’s remarkable in many ways, he’s now a success in business and his ability to process numbers is a sight to behold. He has always known his value but tells a story of his time working under Brian Clough and a particular postmatch rant from his colourful gaffer after a defeat.
Clough was tearing into his team, one by one he would lacerate player after player and then he came to Clarky.
Clough said: “Listen son, I must have been off my head the day I signed you, how much did I pay for you? Hopeless.”
A team-mate helpfully furnished the room with the £150,000 fee which had been forked out and Clough said: “How much? That must have been a full-bottle-of-brandy day, son.”
Few managers knew this old adage better, ‘Price is what you pay, value is what you get.’
It was an unkind anecdote about a more than decent player but just what Clough would have made of the current cattle market would have been worth hearing.
This week has been a case in point with arguments aplenty over price tags and what clubs are prepared to pay
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and opinions on footballers are subjective. Here’s an example. It’s a belief that Hamilton’s Greg Docherty has the potential to have a greater influence on a game than his soon-to-be midfield colleague Ryan Jack.
Box to box and always looking to play forward, with a greater goal threat to boot.
Rangers are currently doing the transfer tango with Accies and the haggling will continue over the weekend as they increase their initial £300,000 offer to get nearer the £600,000 required to get the Scotland Under-21 kid’s services.
It’s a strange one, the perception of Jack as a millionpound-plus asset has never squared with this observer and now there’s this Trotters’ Independent Trading taking place over a youngster full of potential and a boy whose ability to affect games is superior to his more esteemed counterpart. There was also a nod in agreement with Ayr boss Ian McCall’s claim that a £350,000 bid from Ibrox for Kilmarnock’s Jordan Jones was incorrectly priced up.
McCall wouldn’t pay anything more than £150,000 for a wide player he doesn’t especially rate – and he has a point. Jordan’s valued at, cough... cough, splutter, the £1million mark by Rugby Park gaffer Stevie Clarke.
Now, as a player whose biggest transfer fee in a 14-year career was £500, this may sound a bit rich but Rangers will be wise to jog on and look elsewhere as Jones is as run-ofthe-mill a winger as they come.
Pace is one thing but he’s a straight-line runner without the mark of quality required to take his talent to a higher level. At Killie he has found his level.
Agree or don’t agree, it’s only opinion. As for the touted £25million fee for Moussa Dembele, don’t get me started.