As the rebuild goes on behind the scenes (or, at least, we hope that it does) the question as to who want in the manager’s office will soon enough move to ones about who we want in the first team squad from next season. The job is massive.
For some elements of the rebuild, we should be looking at what is on our front door.
There are a handful of decent players in Scotland who could go on to become much better at Celtic Park. Take the defence; we should go and get Ryan Porteous before Hibs start getting ideas about a massive valuation or an English club tests their resolve.
The same applies to Allan Campbell of Motherwell in the middle of the park.
He is going to be a real top drawer footballer and you can tell that as you could with Christie, McGinn and Turnbull. Buy Scottish and we’ll have the foundations for the next great Celtic side, people we can mould into the players we want and need them to be.
If we’re starting from the back, though, the first position to be filled is the one between the sticks, and that’s been a tough one for us. The I think Barkas must get his chance, and I think he will before the end of the season.
But if the club has concerns and wants someone else around as backup (regardless of what happens to Bain) there are two on our own doorstep.
The first is Oli Marciano at Hibs, who is out of contract at the end of the season and who has done enough at Hibs and with the Israeli national team to suggest that he could do a job for us.
He’s a better keeper than Scott Bain, and at worst would be a good backup.
His being available on a free clearly helps.
We have paid £6 million for Barkas, so I honestly don’t want to see us spend a fortune on this position again.
The other option might cost us, but nowhere near that kind of money; his recent performance against us, and his performances overall, suggest that he might well be worth a punt. It’s the Dundee Utd keeper Benjamin Siegrist.
He’s been on our radar for some time.
We were linked with him during the summer and again in January. He’s one to watch.
He is 6’4 and physically imposing.
He commands his penalty area and God knows we need someone who can do that. He is 29, which is not old for a keeper. He is interested in the move too, and says he feels the time is right to make the next step up in his career.
I think he would be a damned good option, even as a backup.
We know what he can do, and we know he wouldn’t cost the Earth … which is important as we don’t know how much money there’s going to be to spend. This is an important position but it’s not a critical one.
These are two reasonably cheap options – in Marciano’s case we’d only be talking about the signing on fee and the agent’s terms. We should consider both.
The Rumour Guy is a Celtic fan and blogger from Glasgow.
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