Going into the next two Champions League games, Celtic’s squad is going to be weaker than the last time we faced Rosenborg. That’s not speculative. At the moment of writing this it’s a cold hard fact, and listening to some people last night talk about the headache we have going in to these games because of Simunovic’s red card is exasperating in a number of ways and not the least of which is this; if we’re short at the back it’s our own damn fault.
We’ve signed Odsonne Edouard on a permanent deal. We’ve done no further transfer business into the club. His signing retains the strength of the forward line from the last campaign. The midfield is weaker. We are weaker out wide. We have stood still at the back and all the attendant problems of the last 12 months were just waiting to reappear.
Think for a second of what we’ve allowed to happen here. Lustig and Gamboa were at the World Cup but it shouldn’t have mattered as we’ve been crying out for a right back for at least a year. So we’re using a central defender to plug that hole. With Boyata at the World Cup too that left us with three options. Ajar is the only dependable one of the lot.
In the first place, Simunovic is injury prone.
The possibility of him being unfit was always present. Compper has never been anything but. Right now, he is unarguably a waste of £1 million and we ought to be looking for ways to cut our losses and bin that guy at the earliest opportunity. Something like this was always on the cards, it was always hovering there and we’ve done exactly nothing to offset the possible consequences of it.
And it gets worse because Kieran continues to be the only reliable option at left back and if he had gotten injured last night with that fact standing out like a searchlight on a foggy shore, our fans would have been perfectly entitled to hold people at Celtic Park accountable for the cost of it. We would be in a world of trouble, and we might be anyway.
Last night, Brendan lamented this bad luck.
But it’s not bad luck and that’s giving the manager and those above him at the club a free pass. It was all too predictable, and they have allowed us to get here yet again, to a place where we’re putting a team together with superglue.
The idea that we’ll sign someone now and throw them right in to those games is a pipedream because it would be just as risky as doing nothing at all, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the signing anyway because a tougher series of games is in front of us … if we win.
It’s scandalous that we’re weaker than this time last year.
It makes you wonder what certain people at Parkhead are doing at the moment. If some of them feel overburdened by commerical business, SFA business, European Club Association business and trying to negotiate transfer deals I suggest that they pass some of that on to somebody else. Because things are getting missed. Signings are taking too damned long.
Our transfer business – the real kind, the stuff that will improve this squad – has been non-existent.
We’ve done exactly nothing, and now we’re at the sharp end, the business end, taking a risk with £40 million, and I am not even going to let the manager off with that because his comments about the way the McGinn deal was dragging out – that he takes no responsibility for that side of things – are deeply disturbing. They suggest that his control over the football operation isn’t as strong as it should be, and nothing worries me more.
If the manager wants his players he is probably going to have fight to get them. It ought not to be that way, but how can you deny that it is? Why do we end up here over and over again, taking these ludicrous risks? If the scouting-signing part of our club was as streamlined as it’s supposed to be we would know all our targets months in advance and we’d be able to get the deals done in a timely fashion. If this is about money that’s even more shocking.
Let’s not beat around the bush here; it’s disgraceful that we’re in this position, with such a huge windfall at stake. It has left us grossly exposed yet again. And this happens year on year.
We are not here by accident. We are here by design. This is the way Celtic does things, and if we crash out of the Champions League in the next fortnight people ought to keep that in mind when the club is trying to sell tickets to the second-rate show.
We go to Rosenborg weaker than last year. That’s how it is and there are people at Celtic Park who appear perfectly content with that position.