Celtic Has Spent Big, But How Much More Can We Realistically Spend In This Window?
Soccer Football - Scottish Premiership - Celtic v Motherwell - Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - May 14, 2022 Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou and Callum McGregor celebrate winning the Scottish Premiership with the trophy REUTERS/Russell Cheyne
The completion of two big deals this week brought our spending in this window above £15 million.
It is a lot of money, even for a club sitting on a surplus from last season’s transfer dealings and general income, and with £40 million in Champions League cash guaranteed.
We have at least two positions still to strengthen; central defence and the defensive midfield berth.
There are rumours that the club wants another forward.
There is clearly scope to further enhance these parts of the team and the will to fill the defensive midfield role is obvious from the number of players we’ve been linked to there, and the manager’s own words.
Vinicius Souza may or may not be the answer in that area.
Whether we’re still interested or are moving on from him due to the length of time it’s taking is unknown.
Clearly he’s on our list of top options, so I could understand if we were putting a hard shift into this to get the deal done … I could equally understand if we walked and went elsewhere.
Rumours continue to circulate on what the fee would be in that deal. Not cheap, for sure. I did predict that there would be at least one “loan with an option to buy” transfer in this window, and he might well be the one we go for.
He’s a City Group player; that comforts me this year because there will be a ton of data on him and we’ll know his qualities inside out. It also makes a loan to buy deal more likely than it would be if he was leaving for somewhere else.
This boils down to a question as to how much more money we might spend in this window. How much can we afford to spend? There’s certainly an awful lot of cash available to us, but that doesn’t mean that every penny will be sunk into the team.
We’re a club that has always looked beyond only what happens on the pitch. Having a surplus is clearly smart stuff, as the global health crisis proved … as long as the team is not under-resourced as a result of that. We must make the squad the priority.
On top of that, signing Vicinius is a big, expensive piece of business and if there is a way to do some kind of “try before you buy” on that it would be smart stuff. This is especially true if we’re going for a defender and a striker on top of that.
I expect that we will spend some more money.
We might even take the spending up to £20 million; that would be a record for the club in one window, and a demonstration of how strong we are when all the parts of this club are running at maximum capacity.
We can afford it. But that doesn’t mean that we should do it or that we would. We’re a vastly better run club than the one across the city, and unless they can sell at least two of their soon-to-be out of contract players they will certainly not be able to spend anywhere close to what we do. I don’t think they will come close to that anyway.
This window isn’t only about strengthening the squad, it is a show of force.
It a demonstration of how much stronger we are than them.
Have you read our article on what Celtic needs in this window? Do it here.
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