Reports in the Scottish media today suggest that Celtic are withdrawing from making a formal bid for the former Blackburn striker Danny Graham; whether this is true or not, and whatever you think of the story, it leaves Brendan Rodgers and his team now facing a race against time to register players for the second qualifying round of the Champions League, in which we’ll be playing.
The draw for those games will be made in five days, on Monday.
The games themselves will be played on 12/13 July.
In between, on 7 July, is the official registration deadline.
That gives us a very short window in which to start getting players in. There is a little over 3 weeks to go before new signings have to be made and integrated in the squad.
Few fans will have an issue with a decision not to sign Graham, if indeed that turns out to be the case. Even those who had given the idea their tentative support understand that we can do better, but it seemed an obvious choice, one that would have reunited the manager with a player he knew and could work with.
It wouldn’t have eaten into the transfer budget either.
We all have faith in Brendan Rodgers; he knows what he’s doing at what he wants to do. Yet this deadline is real and it is fast approaching. We can’t afford to get caught short.
All things considered, we really shouldn’t have much to fear from the second round qualifiers; it’s when we start getting beyond that point that things become messy, with the likes of Red Star and others very possibly lying in wait of us. Yet there are banana skin possibilities in the second round all the same; Swedish champions IFK Norrköping and Ferencvaros amongst them.
The team has to be ready for this possibility. We may have the players currently in the squad to complete the job – I’m fairly sure our best eleven could do it – but why leave it to chance?
To have the best possible chance we need to strengthen.
I do think Brendan will make a huge difference to the way we approach games, but we have one striker in the squad right now; one. If we’ve decided not to pursue Graham it has to be because we have other irons in the fire.
Let’s get one of them in and a couple more players with him.
If we do that we approach these games entirely without fear.