Going for broke, or just going broke?

Is it the so-called credit crunch? Is it an absence of ambition? Or is it a chronic lack of cash?

Whatever it is, it’s caused both Caley and Dundee United to sell undoubtedly their best strikers, and possibly their best players, Marius Niculae and Noel Hunt respectively, within 24 hours of each other. And their glamorous destinations? Dinamo Bucharest, and Reading. One is a city that is, in appearance, a soulless, concrete-covered Cold War relic, and the other is the capital of Romania. (Cue the sound of ba-doom-tch from my house drummer)

It’s very worrying up in the Highlands, quite apart from the fact that our strike force now consists of Andy Barrowman (who is a proven goalscorer only at div 2 level), Garry Wood (a youngster who has never played in the SPL) and Rory McAllister (a youngster who has played in the SPL, and looks more out of place than a Morris Minor on a formula one circuit). The sale of Niculae had a certain inevitablility about it – his wages are high, he’s a Romanian international, he played at the Euros, we’re hardly in a position to turn half a mil down – but what’s more worrying is the suggestion from the club that we’re badly in need of the moolah and that very little of it is going to be spent in the transfer market. There’s a suggestion that the Arabs are in the same boat.

Certainly, up the A9 we’ve been paying diddy wages for years – we must have the lowest wage budget in the SPL bar perhaps the Accies. Granted, our attendances aren’t great, but we’re an SPL club, we haven’t spent outwith our means, so why are we and other teams beginning to look down the back of the Players’ Lounge sofas for loose change now?

It’s not good.

It doesn’t help that the gruesome twosome have tried to grab more cash off everyone else by claiming they require a 5% admin charge on every ticket they sell for their away games – cheeky soap dodgers that they are. So promptly Falkirk have said that they’ll sell the away tickets themselves! This also means that local old firm fans are less likely to nick seats in the home ends, and means they can sell the tickets to whoever they like, rather than the usual trash that scatter buckfast bottles all over the place and sing their usual sectarian hate-filled guff. I’m desperately hoping they do the same at the Caledonian Stadium this season coming – the smell and sound from the away end when we play Rangers and Celtic is simply nauseating.

L.