A Fool And His Money

IT'S indeed an old saying that a fool and his money are easily parted. It would be cheeky in the extreme to say the people running that football institution Glasgow Celtic FC are fools, but - come on, £2 million for Gary Hooper, a player who isn't even a household name in his own household, has to make one question the sanity of Neil Lennon and his masters.

For a start, the last two Scunthorpe United players to attract this sort of attention were the teenaged Kevin Keegan and a Scunthorpe reserve centre forward named Ian Botham, whose true talents lay elsewhere.

Nothing in his record suggests Mr Hooper is a Keegan (even if KK was arguably the most-over-rated of the many over-rated England "greats" of the past half century), far less a Botham (now there was a genuine superstar).

Let's put it into context: Scunthorpe United last season were the 40th best side in the English Leagues. That makes them the English equivalent of Elgin City. Celtic fans, would you see an Elgin City striker, even one who had scored regularly in the league, as the man to score goals for The Hoops?

Yep, though not, me neither.

And what message does this send to the young players at Lennoxtown? Without going too-deeply into West of Scotland bigotry, the fact is, the vast majority of the guys who run the football at the Roman Catholic Secondary Schools in the West of Scotland (and perhaps further afield) to a man have one ambition - to see one of their boys make it all the way to a first-team jersey at Celtic Park.

That's not conjecture - I was told that by one of the most-experienced of that group, when he retired from teaching. He made it clear, although he had set two Scotland Under-21 internationalists on their way to lengthy careers in the game, he had never produced a Celtic first-team player, and felt unfulfilled as a result.

Therefore, Celtic have an unpaid, unofficial army of recruiting officers, dedicated to ensuring a steady supply of promising players arrive at the club. Celtic has had arguably the best record in the SPL's age group competitions over the past decade - but most of these young players end-up elsewhere.

What does the decision to chase Hooper say to Cilian Sheridan for instance? He's scored goals in the SPL, he's served his time. He has seen Scott McDonald depart, Giorgios Samaras could be on his way - but, it's apparently not Sheridan who will get the chance to make the striker's place his own, it's some guy we've never heard of, with no apparent Celtic connection, who hasn't played in as good a league as Sheridan, for as long.

There again, perhaps Hooper will out-score Henrik Larsson, in which case his agent will get him a nice EPL gig. But, if he's that good and only on-offer at £2 million - how come he's not a squad player in the EPL? That's small change in that league.

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