You would never believe, to listen to them, that some of our hacks pay attention to the sport that they are supposed to be covering.
Amidst all the autopsies on yesterday’s scandalous Celtic display there is suddenly a new realisation about the size of the job we face in the summer. But only those who are deaf and blind, or stupid, could have failed to see this before now.
You can read here the article I wrote about this in February, which I updated last month.
The size of this job is massive, and since I wrote that piece we’ve gotten rid of Klimala, which makes it an ever bigger deal.
Furthermore, I said in that piece that the full-backs were the most likely players to be retained, with loan extensions … only a mug would try to make that case now.
Those who are in the media today throwing around talk of Celtic needing ten players in the coming window might have their own agendas for saying so, but none of them are being alarmist; that’s the size of the job in front of the new manager.
Wishing it wasn’t so doesn’t make it less real; this is the biggest rebuilding job a Celtic manager has faced in a long, long, long time. It is the first time in my living memory that so many first team players are departing at the same time.
I cannot believe it has taken certain members of our media this long to realise it.
The truth of it has been evident for a while.
We have, for example, four players on loan; all of them are going back to their clubs. We have three players whose contracts are running out and none will sign new deals. Add to that, Scott Brown who’s already gone.
Right away that’s eight players, across five positions. Klimala is nine.
In addition, we certainly need a new goalkeeper, which brings us up to ten … and that’s only to retain the “strength” – if you want to call it that, and I don’t – of the current first team unit.
Even with the squad as it stands right now, we are weak in no fewer than five positions; central defence, and on both wings in attack as well as defence.
This has all been evident for months now, including inside Celtic Park, which makes the delaying seem pretty ridiculous.
It’s as if the scale of this hasn’t sunk in with some people yet but it really needs to, and it doesn’t matter that this is eejits like Billy Dodds now pointing out, or Kris Commons ranting like a maniac about it … facts are facts, as painful as they might be.
To my mind there’s no point being angry at the people pointing it out … we should be angry at the people who left us in this state in the first place, the people “running” the club.
As I said in the last piece, this is necessary.
Too many members of this squad don’t want to be here and aren’t committed to the cause; get them out the door. Too many members of this squad aren’t good enough to be here. Move them along as well.
The problem is that a job this size takes time to put together … and we have wasted an awful, awful lot of that time. We need to up our game significantly if we’re going to be anywhere near ready when the next campaign gets underway.