Pre-season started today with Celtic weaker than they finished the last campaign.
Talk about a club which knows how to drag its feet.
The manager was explicit in not wanting this scenario to unfold. He spelled it out.
Those above him … well, I hope they aren’t reverting to past form.
The team flies out to Austria at the end of the week.
To be frank, it will be appalling if this squad goes out there without some quality additions and the board apologists can stamp their feet as much as they like over that assertion.
The manager delivered big time last season.
This board must get its business done quickly, as he wanted.
There are some who will tell you that transfer business is hard. It’s garbage.
Clubs all around Europe manage to get deals over the line in a timely fashion.
There are clubs in Scotland who have signed more than half a dozen players. Hibs and Hearts are busying away bringing guys in. If we are, again, fumbling, stumbling and bumbling about as usual, taking an eternity to close deals, then hard questions need to be asked about those above Ange’s head.
Deals will be completed soon.
This is what we keep being told. But to be honest, all I get every day from Celtic right now are a host of emails encouraging me to buy stuff. Here’s a though; why doesn’t the club spend some money instead of us asking us to?
No matter how this is dressed up, there is no Bitton. No Rogic. At the moment there is no Jota. Our squad is notably weaker than it was, and that’s the reality of it at the present time. If some of our fans have the jitters over that it is not terribly hard to understand why.
The Jota deal will be done soon, so says the media. But this is the same media that has gotten it wrong time and time and time again in this window already, so I’m not sure at this point why anyone is taking their word for that.
It’s hard not to form the impression that we’re slow-walking as per usual.
The board has until the end of the week to change that perception.
If this squad goes out to Austria still weaker than it was when the last campaign ended I don’t imagine that the blogs will be the only people pointing this fact out. Don’t be surprised if Ange is too.
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You cannot really compare Celtic’s transfer dealings with the likes of Hearts, Hibs or Aberdeen etc. for they are buying in the bargain basement where plenty of players are available for lower prices. They are also prepared to play for much less wages and are therefore happy to grab an opportunity when it’s there. Celtic are forking out millions for the right fit and it often does take time and patience to sort out what can be a complicated process.
It’s still early days in the transfer window and there is no need for knee jerk reactions.
The weakest part of our club is the Board.
There is no backbone to them.
Another Lawell in the building.
Titter ye not. When there’s something concrete to spread your signing annoyance with then these speculative views of yours will have absolute validity, Bit early for me and level headedness to join in that because you thought it would be done and dusted last week.
We’ve already made three good signings as far as I’m aware so pretty much on a par with the Scottish clubs you mentioned. With what looks like a LB and a LW due to sign up any day and interest, I hope, in a decent CD and a decent defensive CM also on the horizon I’d say we’re on schedule for a successful summer of acquisitions.
Seems sensible to allow the LB’s two match suspensions to witter away this week, or at least one that has now already passed. If we don’t get the CD and DCM we want straight away maybe its also because our club and our league doesn’t have the reputation and attraction we’d hope we had but Ange is employed to improve on that. I’m sure he will.
The picture you paint today is therefore at least a week premature, only because it doesn’t fit within your signing timescale. Its liable to spread speculative anger and panic just like the papers want us too and highlight our club as that of a club in a signing crisis. We are far from that.
Waiting is the worst part, but for now – Easy Tiger – give it another week.
My thoughts exactly…