Brendan Rodgers has confirmed that Nawrocki and Carter Vickers will be out of the next two months. Which is disastrous to say the least. And it changes everything now about how we are going to spend the last seven days of this window, because this is not now something that we can afford to simply wait out until we see an improvement.
The timeframe on the recoveries of these guys is eight weeks; it is likely to be longer. So that’s a return towards the end of October if we’re lucky, and what are the odds? The words “lucky” and “Celtic” do not go together at the moment. The last thing we’ll be is lucky. The timeframe is going to be longer than that, perhaps mid-November.
That’s most of the Champions League Group Stages. We can’t possibly go into those games with the backline looking the way it does right now. Welsh is out for months. Now these two are out for months. That’s pretty much wiped our central defence out, and this without picking up any further injuries niggles or knocks. It’s calamitous.
I guess those transfer market solutions are going to be necessary after all. It’s no longer a case of “how many defenders do we need?” or “how many defenders do we want”? We have no choice now but to bring in one and perhaps even two old war horses, even if it’s on short term deals, which of course eats into the available transfer budget.
A matter of weeks, we can get by with. We can apply sticking plaster solutions to those, by playing Iwata as a centre back or moving Alastair Johnston inside if we’re out of all other options.
We cannot go to Ibrox, Easter Road, Motherwell, Livingston and Tynecastle and play half our Champions League games on top of that with two fit centre backs, one of whom is Liam Scales.
You can’t look at that and believe that it’s tenable, because it clearly isn’t.
I think we can all remember injury crises at our club before. But we’re looking at three out of our five centre backs on the sidelines for months and two of them were arguably first picks. That’s something I’ve never seen before, and never want to see again. That isn’t just a problem we have to work around, that’s a serious threat to the whole campaign.
Based on that we have no other option except t to do what I’m sure no person at Celtic Park actually wants to do, and that’s spend resources on this area of the team. But we’re out of wiggle room. We have no alternative. We can’t expect to work around this for eight to ten weeks or longer, our season could be in ruins long before these guys are back.
Short term loans obviously make more sense than signings, and now we’re going to have to push that button. We can promise these guys Champions League football without any caveats because we’ve got no-one else to play in these positions. That alone should make it easier to bring them in. The question is, are we going to have enough time?
This one can’t be blamed on the board although let’s be blunt; if we’d gotten the rest of our business done in a timely manner this would be much easier to do. This is the consequence of all the foot dragging. At the end of the day though, this is like getting struck by lightning and you can’t hold anyone responsible for that.
But they need to provide solutions, now more than ever these people have to up their game.
We shouldn’t have sold Starfelt. One of our 2 main centre half’s, few years left in his contract, and we let him go coz he wants to chase after his girlfriend.
Same with Giakomakis and Juranovic last year. Years left on their contracts and we let them go, for not even big fees, just because they fancy a change. I know you don’t need ‘want aways’ in a squad but we’re making it far too easy for important players to head away on their terms.
Typical Celtic!! And they said how good it is not having qualifiers to play. Once again we fail to push on and buy quality players.
You do know that he went to La Liga … not as if he went to a tin pot league ! Whether the Jacinta thing was true or not .. he will be playing against Real, Atletico, Barcelona .. you know the type of teams that we offer (Champions League) as an attraction to facing the Ross County´s and Kilmarnocks. Plus he probably is getting a higher wage. NOW whether we got a good value for him that could be argued. Again Juranovic went to the Bundesliga to play against the Bayerns and the Dortmunds. You can not hold these players when they get this type of opportunity otherwise they could play without interest (think Edouard in the Covid season).
4-1-4-1, James. No panic. Johnston, Lagerbielke, Kobayashi, Scales. Iwata. O’Rielly, Hatate, McGregor, Yang. Kyogo. HH
is big efe ambrose still available ????
Lol don’t give me nightmares 🙂
Ithink we need to strenthed or defence we leeking goals ralston not good enough players not strong enough pushed of the ball to easy we need agood defensive midfielder good 6 ft striker to good wingers a keeper hart to clumsey every time he has the ball he give you a heart attack we are carrien to much baggage we need to ofload and bring in some quality the have the money bringing in 8/9on the cheap hopping to make selling 1/2 on
haksebanovic wants away and some Saudi team showing an interest in Hatate…. Jeez!!!!
It’s the why, WHY are we going back to guys getting injuries lasting ages? What’s going on?
Where is the point in having a B team? In any functioning football club, the reserves should be able to step up to the first team, in the event of injuries or suspensions… without a sizeable drop in quality. This should be the case at Celtic, but quite obviously, is not.
Hail Hail.
CCV came back too quickly. We should not have sold Starfelt. Ibrox looks tough …it was always going to be tough now it looks like they are favs for that game. Oh my we have money in back and continue to squander on non first team starters. We lost three first team starters we needed to spend 20m on three quality replacements. We got that for Jota FFS what are we doing who is running this ? Power needed for sometime at CB DM LB and CF. People are asleep at the wheel here just like build up to ten in a row failure. Feels similar.
Adversity, setbacks, viable solutions. Whatever the case the fans trust that those selected will give their utmost ‘for the jersey’. Celtic still have the best squad in Scotland and I’m hopeful they won’t just ‘surrender and die’ but recognise the privilege.
Similarly the Board have to ‘get on board’ and pull out all the stops for success.
Think it’s fair to say crisis point has been reached now.
Huge problems now in the defensive set up, but ifs there a problem a solution has to be sought, somehow still not overly confident that the right solutions will be found.
3 CB missing now from the CL squad and possibly a longshot for them to be even included for the group stages now?
Huge decision awaits, as is it really worth including an injured player into a CL squad, when they might only be available for 2 games, if lucky?
Not overly concerned about the trip to the shit hole, with the scum already playing catch up with ourselves, and hardly got a squad to be mouthing about either.
The next week or so is going to be the most crucial I can ever recall within the transfer market, with a few incoming loan signings to be expected imo.