During the mid-point part of this window, where most of us were wondering what in the Hell was taking so long about the Jota deal, I lamented that we were, as usual, going to leave things to the last minute.
Then that deal was done, and within days Ange had announced that he expected two more signings by the end of the week.
Mooy came in and then Jenz did. The latter has already scored a crucial goal.
Ange says there will be business in both ways in these last few weeks; what is remarkable about that is that there’s no clamour now for deals to be concluded anytime soon.
The club is content to wait. The manager is content to wait … and so are the fans.
The key business – the left back, centre back, midfield reinforcement and the locking down of the two big loanees – is already concluded. Most of us are sitting back with smiles on our faces, because those were the priorities and they’ve been met.
There is a lesson here for Celtic’s leadership figures, those above Ange; the value in doing things for the benefit of the football department and not the balance sheet are obvious.
I have never seen the whole of our club in a more relaxed frame of mind, from the fans up.
We are all keen to see what is next in the transfer market, of course we are.
But if the window closed tomorrow I would be basically happy with the current balance of the squad and I think most people would be. Even if this had been a Champions League qualifiers year, we would have had the top people in place before a ball was kicked.
That is working fast. That is working better than we have in years.
And you can see the benefits of it. Everyone is buzzing.
The team is performing well. Everything is going like clockwork on and off the pitch. There is no mad late scrambling, no fretting or stressing over the weeks ahead … just a calm anticipation.
What a difference from previous years.
What a difference from the Lawwell regime, when we had to watch managers desperate for new players sometimes on the final day. Anyone who thinks this guy would be a fitting Celtic chairman ought to remember that.
We are clearly moving forward. It would be the wrong time to go backwards.
Just a thought on the length of time it took to conclude the Jota deal. Were Celtic splitting two major purchases across two accounting periods. ACV was (I think) done and dusted before the end of June which is the end of Celtic’s accounting year. By pushing Jota’s deal into the new financial year Celtic will be able to report a bigger profit / smaller loss for the period. This will protect the share price and keep DD happy. It also explains the calmness exhibited by all sides in the weeks prior to the conclusion of Jota’s deal.
The guaranteed CL money obviously has a large part to play in the way we have been able to conduct business. If we had finished 2nd then it would not be so calm. The huns still have players they are not sure if they can afford to keep or must let go. That’s the situation we would have been in. I doubt both Jota and CCV would have signed full term deals. So I disagree with your assertion that everything would be calm even if we still had to go through the qualifiers.
So what lessons does the board need to register here? We must win the League every season and it must guarantee CL group stage football?
You can’t worry about things you can’t control.
Of course we’re still goin to have bangers like graeme (i admit i had a lump in my throat when rangers beat Dortmund) young of the DR, along with his fellow sevco fan boy, excuses for journalists, still continuing and hoping, to try and unsettle our players with this daily, relentless, obsessive, transfer rumour bollocks. Tae think, if i.e. Morelos had said he was happy and glad to stay over there, you just know that would be the end of it, silence, end of. Our player, no chance. Keep the rumours up at all costs. Amazin what a strong lookin Celtic squad can do tae their heads.
Celtic would certainly still have wanted to sign CCV and Jota had we not been in the CL, Because from Celtic’s point of view we were getting both of them for much less than they were actually worth and they were more than likely guaranteed transfer profit makers in the future.
However, not being in the CL might not have attracted them to the Club and we will never know then what might have happened in that situation. I’m just glad it all worked out favourably.
I would still like to see a couple of signings. A solid DCM and a tallish decent left sided CB would be good too. The CL money has eased any pain we would have had if we hadn’t won the league and I don’t feel like the club, the board, etc, has shafted us at all and have actually done a good supportive role. That’s a good sign going forward, this season and time will tell if we are a decent CL team yet
Still think the recruitment has went into hibernation since Jota and CCV.
Complacency has always been the hallmark of our board through history.
Hope we are not made to regret what I think is going with basically same squad as last season with no real obvious improvement.
Fair comment. We haven’t rolled forward too much, we have strengthened the 1st team squad though and a couple more strategic positional signings I hope will bounce us up a level. We won the league and haven’t gone backwards isn’t the greatest booster of confidence but they finished 2nd and have. I’d love to see a bit more quality but we’re no CL big hitters so it seems small steps forward is the financial model.