Some people asked me earlier if I intended to do a piece on Celtic’s lack of transfer activity. I said no. But in hindsight, I should actually have agreed to it at once because I know as well as anyone else that the clock is ticking loudly now.
Brendan Rodgers is not a man to express his displeasure publicly, but he knows we’re heading into a tough spell now. We have European games rumbling towards us like a Tiger Tank. The first of them is on Tuesday and we’re almost too late for bringing in somebody before it takes place. We are allowed one “wild card” signing the night before the game … but we know that the so-called “wild card” player won’t take part in the match.
But worse is to follow; we’re on the brink of a potential tie with Rosenborg who we struggled to beat last season. And our squad is weaker now than it was then, and I think the best we can hope for prior to that game is that we replace Armstrong and Roberts.
Time is running out fast. If we lose that tie having made no signings fans are fully entitled to demand answers from the board, and they will definitely be asked. I believe we’ll get stuff done by then, but the question, as ever, is why these things take so long with us.
This time last year the fans were stunned to learn that we had signed a Manchester City player called Olivier Ntcham. We had no idea who he was, but the fee was big and he held great promise. We saw signs of life. But the move came out of the blue, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.
I have no doubt Celtic is working behind the scenes here too.
The thing is, as we’ve seen this week, people get hysterical when nothing is happening. In the absence of real news a lot of folk invent their own reality and get lost in it. The Tierney story would never have surfaced if people had something else to focus on; as I said in a previous article, the media is the same. If you’re not feeding the beast it finds something else to bite down on, and for us that means they’re stirring the soup.
The club would be doing us all a favour if they gave the hacks something else to write, if they gave us something else to focus on. And this is not simple impatience. That big ticking clock in the background is real enough, and it’s counting down.