Celtic have financial advantage on their side in transfer battle with Portuguese giants

 

FC Porto are a great big club, but right now they’re not a very financially comfortable club. And whilst that’s bad news for the Dra­gões, it’s good news for Celtic.

The BBC reported this week that Brendan Rodgers faces a battle against 11 other clubs to sign Roberts. Nice and Porto were the only other two sides named, but the latter may excuse themselves from such a race.

Can Porto afford to spend £10m+ on Roberts? Only if they sell players, and quickly, and even then they’d be looking at a much lower amount. Then there’s the wages, Celtic would almost certainly be happy to offer more than Porto would, knowing there’s a very good chance Roberts would be a success.

Porto probably aren’t in the position to take the gamble on Roberts, unaware of how he’d adapt to Portugal or football in the country. Right now, it’s not something likely to be on Porto’s to-do list, which most likely starts with sell-sell-sell.

Unnamed German teams may well include Schalke, and we covered claims from Germany at the end of May that they could provide competition to Celtic. However, German newspaper Bild valued a potential transfer at €10m, almost certainly too low.

Theres no great stream of reporting in France that Nice are set to provide competition to Celtic for Patrick Roberts, other than covering claims from The Sun.

This one is going to be difficult for Celtic and Rodgers, but maybe not quite as difficult as some believe.