Ange Postecoglou said today that signing twelve players during a single transfer window was too many. It is perfectly clear what he meant when he said it. The context of it is plain. He thinks that it’s unsettling. He would rather not have had to do it.
But The Record seems determined to quote him out of context. “Ange Postecoglou reckons Celtic may have added too many new faces in the transfer window after a hectic summer at Parkhead,” says the first line of the report, which seems pretty clear cut.
Except that’s plainly not what the manager meant, as his own comments show.
“It was pretty clear with a number of departures last year and during the window, even on the last day, so we had to bring in a few players,” he said.
“It’s not as easy as selecting the ones you want and bringing them in, as we found. It was a bit of a challenge and every deal we did a lot of work went into it. We brought in 12 which I think is probably too many in one window to be fair, but we needed that.”
The crucial phrase is “we needed that.” Under normal circumstances nobody would ever have wanted to embark on this kind of nonsense … all except at Ibrox, of course, where Gerrard did it three windows in a row, replacing an entire squad on every occasion.
It’s funny, I don’t remember anyone asking him if it was too much.
The media’s desire to get a negative out of everything we do is quite extraordinary. Had we not signed so many players the media would have accused us of leaving the manager hung out to dry. Now they are asking him if we signed too many players, and twisting his answer to get the headline they want. The guy can’t win and he shouldn’t even try.
Ange and Dominic McKay inherited one Hell of a mess from the geniuses who preceded them, and it’s to the immense credit of both of those men (and indeed everyone at Celtic) that we were able to so completely rebuild our squad. It was ridiculous that they had to do a job that size, they were dealt a lousy hand but performed brilliantly.
You might have expected them to get credit for that, but with the press corps we have here there was never much chance of it.