This week we’ll complete signings three, four and five. We know that for sure. Will there be a sixth? A seventh? Perhaps, and I would not be surprised if there were. It’s a huge number of players to sign in a single transfer window, and that our squad will be stronger at the end of it if we do is not something the sanest person would dispute.
Even five signings, on top of a treble winning team which almost set new records, would be classed as a massive summer of business. Losing Jota and Mooy has blinded some people to the scale of this. We’re adding players to what is already a very good squad. Ibrox has signed a half dozen players and they are calling it a revolution. So why are we getting stick for our signings? Why aren’t they terming this the Rodgers revolution? The double standard is shocking.
We’re strengthening a side which was already immensely strong. You would think we would get credit for that, but of course we won’t. Five signings, at a combined cost of well over £10 million, would be regarded as outstanding anywhere else in this country. If there are two or three more, and another big chunk of money spent, we should get credit for it.
But of course, we won’t. The media isn’t built for giving us our due. It would make some of these Peepul physically sick if they had to acknowledge that this team is going to be stronger going into the next campaign. Everything they’ve written has been geared towards denying that. They will continue to deny it right up until the moment the first ball is kicked.
At that point, there’ll be no more talking, only the doing of business where it matters; on the pitch. We have signed a defensive midfield hard-man. We have signed the centre back we’ve wanted. We’ve sent one of Northern Europe’s best up and coming midfielders and we have brought in two tricky wingers who will augment the talent we already have out wide.
This is the week when we start to silence this crumby, shady, biased media narrative that we’re a team in some kind of decline.
Their fervent hope all the way through this summer was that first we would botch the managerial hunt; we didn’t. We brought in Rodgers with that outstanding seven trophies out of seven record. They hoped half the squad would follow Postecoglou to Spurs. It didn’t happen. They thought Kyogo would depart anyway, but he signed a new deal.
Jota went, yes, but we netted a transfer record for him and still have the cash to spend. They thought Maeda, Abada and Hatate might get big offers and go … Maeda signed a new deal and although Hatate would love to play in England he is focussed on the coming season and the Champions League. Abada had a one on one with Rodgers and he too is up for the battle. The news is nothing but positive at Celtic … and still we get negativity.
During the course of this summer we’ve been attacked for the Rodgers appointment, the “Ange signings” which he of course approved, the strip, the Wolves fixture being cancelled, the club has been cast as being in crisis because of injuries, conceding goals in a friendly and not spending money in spite of two signings complete and three about to be confirmed. We’ve been accused of signing “project players” by arrogant eejits who haven’t watched them play.
None of it changes the fundamentals, which is that this is a treble winning team. Aside from the loss of one key player and an excellent backup in Mooy, we have maintained the core of the side and replaced a top class manager with another one. We are in far better shape than these people thought that we might be … and the best is yet to come.
This is the week we start to punch back; three signings soon to be announced, and who knows what else in the pipeline and a game in Dublin to look forward to at the end of it. Fasten your seatbelts for it folks. This is going to be a fun one.