Our track record with reluctant sellers

[ronk]

Seeing Samaras flash up on a TV add about Celtic today got me thinking about some of the players we've signed down through the years who haven't performed. There are plenty of reasons and everyone is different, but a large part of what jumped out was that some less effective purchases were the ones where the selling club fought it and didn't want to sell us the player in the first place. Some of our quieter, friendlier purchases (without necessarily being cheaper) have been more successful.

Heerenveen weren't happy with Samaras and publicly dissuaded us. Dabo was a Bosman who'd caused some controversy by turning down decent offers. Everton were venomous over Lescott (decent player but overpriced) then there's Santa Cruz, Benjani (except for right at the end), Jo, Bridge (Chelsea wanted to keep him), Milner (jury is still out in a lot of ways). There are always exceptions like Given.

Other signings that I recalled as being more amicable were Kompany, Johnson, Toure, de Jong, Silva (he was leaving anyway, this way they got a good price), Balotelli, Boateng, Barry, Elano, Corluka, Zabaleta, Anelka etc. Again there were exceptions like Bianchi.

I really think there might be a lesson to be learnt there in terms of pursuing players and knowing when to give up. Wearing down clubs that are fighting to hold onto a player doesn't seem to be a particularly good strategy, in terms of value for money obviously, but also in terms of performance.