Celtic podcaster Paul John Dykes has slammed the club’s deal to move on French midfielder Olivier Ntcham in the January transfer window.
Dykes appeared as a guest on the latest episode of the ‘A Celtic State of Mind’ podcast and the panel discussed multiple issues involving the Hoops’ approach in the January transfer window. One topic of discussion was Olivier Ntcham’s loan move to Marseille. Dykes criticised the deal because Marseille have the option of signing the midfielder for only £4.5 million.
While Ntcham has joined Marseille on a loan deal and they have the option to buy him permanently, then-boss Andre Villas-Boas offered his resignation – before being suspended and sacked – in response to Marseille’s decision to sign the midfielder against his wishes.
Are you disappointed by the Ntcham deal?
Yes
No
Dykes made his frustration clear about the option-to-buy clause and the fact that the amount they could receive is a lot lower than he had anticipated.
He said: “Looking at this situation, you know, yeah – time was right for him to go, some might say it should have been in the summer – but, for me, it’s a situation with a player who had so much talent. You look back to even last season to his finest moment in a Celtic jersey against Lazio away. Undoubted talent, didn’t do it often enough for Celtic – but my biggest frustration is the deal that we’ve done.
“So we were talking about this yesterday, and someone had sent me a link to a French website, who were talking about a €10 million deal. And obviously, the permanent deal will be something more in the region of £4.5 million, which I think is, there or thereabouts, what we paid for him. I don’t think we’ve done a good bit of business here with Ntcham. Yeah, right for him to go, but he’s regressed massively and obviously his value’s dropped hugely.”
TIF Thoughts on Dykes’ comments regarding Ntcham…
Back in February 2020, Ntcham’s value stood at £4.5 million, but it has only gone down since then. It was at £3.6 million in July last year (as per Transfermarkt).
It now stands at just £3.15 million and it could be because of that fact that he’s played only 590 minutes of Premiership football this season and has not started a single league game since October.
Because of how few games he’s played, it is understandable why his value has fallen. So it is easy to see why Marseille have the option to buy him for just £4.5 million instead of a value which would have been around double what they paid for the ex-Manchester City man in 2017.