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Celtic Fans Are Fine With Players Leaving Because We Trust The Man In The Dugout.

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An age old media strategy has been playing out for months with little or no success.

It is the putting of constant stories in the newspapers about our players, attempts to shake up Celtic by upsetting the squad and the supporters. It is supposed to get us wailing that this “selling club” of ours intends to asset strip the title winning team the manager has built.

And it has largely failed to accomplish any of those goals.

It is a strategy which increasingly looks like one without hope of success. Celtic fans are just not tuning into it, and the reason they aren’t is incredibly simple; Celtic fans trust the manager.

Celtic fans have seen enough of the process he’s put in place to have faith in it too.

Even those of us who aren’t happy that the ex-CEO is back in the building know that if he stays out of things that aren’t his concern that the machine will continue to roll smoothly and things will get done in the proper way.

Since he left his former role it’s been better.

The manager gave an interview to the media a month or so ago which they never widely publicised. I only know about it because one of The Record “Monday Jury” clowns mentioned it almost in passing, but I thought what he said was fairly significant.

He said that phase one is signing £2 million players to sell them in order to buy £5 million players to sell them in order to move up to the £10 million players.

It’s not easy to do.

You have to sell for a sufficient value to be able to move up, but look at the squad as it stands; clearly, it has worked so far and there’s a clear direction of travel being mapped out.

It is structured. It is cogent.

It is backed by a lot of knowledge and if we get past phase one then phase two will be bagged by serious enough money that phrase three starts to look less like something likely than something certain.

Needless to say, the squad improves with every evolution, the financial position stays strong and the club continues winning things.

It’s designed for progress in Europe. And as all of us know, and have long pushed the line on our club, that if you’re good enough to slug it out in the Champions League then being comfortably ahead in Scotland pretty much takes care of itself. If we had focussed on reaching for that next rung there would never have been a Gerrard title win.

Juranovic may go, but his replacement is in place. Giakoumakis might leave but there will be options being explored for that eventuality.

We believe in this because we believe in the man at the top of the house, not the chairman but the manager, Ange Postecoglou, and so for the first time when we read talk about players maybe going there is no panic.

We are calm, because we know that it’s part of the plan, that it’ll be handled, that the manager will not just look to replace but upgrade.

It’s always good being a Celtic fan, but this feels like a special time.

It feels like we’re moving in a direction where all good things are possible.

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  • Al says:

    Te man in the dug out, as much as I love him, will not control who comes or goes .we will continue to sell almost every player who rises above the level . It makes it almost impossible to build a team of real quality long term. Some fans seem elated that we can sell players at a greater fee than sevco can. Surely being able to retain these players ought to be the ultimate goal?

    • Kevan McKeown says:

      @ Al. Agree wi that. Tho ah think, with a lot of players theirselves, if they were creatin enough interest then it would probably end up out of our hands. Just a hard fact of the SPL. These days unfortunately, loyalty doesnae mean as much where big moneys concerned or a move tae a better league. Altough we should be tryin all we can tae keep our best players, absolutely.

  • Saulgoodman says:

    Selling the big Greek would be a good piece of business , couple of reasons 1st one being hes not very good 2nd his replacement will almost Certainly be a better finisher + all round player , then next season hopefully someone whose an upgrade on kyogo + then we will start getting wins in the champions league

  • SSMPM says:

    James you don’t speak for all Celtic fans, why would we be fine selling our players. We may know that we have to settle for our club being willing to sell players that rise above the parapet of talent in the SPL, but fine with it? Na.
    In particular, I’m not fine with the hun papers speculating about what they think the fee should be or reporting the fee as if its come from inside Paradise and Celtic blogs repeating their dribble. We should be talking £25m minimum

  • Duncan says:

    I’m not fine with Celtic choosing to sell key assets in January when we have a League to win and the possibility of securing another £30-40m with straight access to the Champions League.
    I’m also not happy about it because we started the Financial Year off with £30m in the Bank and therefore in a position to add more quality without losing what quality we already have.
    Lastly I’m not behind it because in the last decade this approach has been brought into play we’ve gone from the Last 16 in the Champions League to losing 17 games in the Champions League getting absolutely nowhere near qualifying for the next phase.
    Now whilst it has been very beneficial for Investors off the Park selling our best players annually it certainly hasn’t been beneficial on it in Europe.
    Which is supposed the level Ange Postecoglou wants to make his mark in.
    If he wants solid proof that selling quality and replacing them with unproven potential is counter productive then he only need to check our results in Europe for verification on that.

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