There seems to be some negative – and surprised – reactions to the news that Shane Duffy won’t be leaving Celtic in this window.
I am moved to ask why he would be.
We’ve lost Christopher Jullien, probably for the rest of the season, so I can’t see any reason why we’d want to sacrifice another centre back, which would leave us no just short but crisis-stage short.
It is so typical of a segment of our support, that they would want us to cast aside a footballer with no clear plan for replacing him, and in doing so squandering money.
If you accept – and most of us do now – that the league campaign has slipped away from us then it makes no sense, and especially not without a new manager, to do major surgery on the team right now … and needing to bring in two centre backs would certainly be major.
Yes, there are youth players who could fill the gaps, and Stephen Welsh looks decent enough, but in this high pressure, tense kind of atmosphere we shouldn’t be throwing a kid into that kind of deep water and hoping it turns out well.
Duffy has been one of the most disappointing signings in the recent history of our club, and there’s no doubt about that. But he is a footballer with Premier League experience.
Who else in our defence has that? None of them. Can we afford to let that experience go?
Duffy is a victim of this dreadful season, he is not the cause of it.
Our coaches are incapable of properly organising this defence.
You only have to look across at Ibrox where inferior footballers have gone through the season barely conceding a goal; the problem is in coaching and nowhere else.
Even if we were going to replace Duffy, we’d be back where we are now soon enough.
It seems evident we’re going with things as they currently stand.
What’s the point in improving it now?
The league campaign is a disastrous failure.
We will get second easily but that’s about the extent of the challenge facing us. The manager is still in place, so there is no rebuilding job to be done until the summer and God knows what the plan is.
Until we do, we need to stick with what we’ve got.