Damn The “Profile.” There Are Reasons Why Celtic Will Sign Experience In This Window.

Yesterday, I put up my article on Ryan Fraser and in light of some of what I’ve been reading online in the past week or two – the incredible number of posts accusing our club of penny pinching and going backwards and question Rodgers – I was dismayed but not surprised at the negativity of some of the comments on it. And amused at some of the dafter ones.

“He’s no Jota,” was a familiar refrain from people who had never heard of Jota two years ago when he was a Benfica reserve, and when Ryan Fraser was playing in the most watched league in the world every week.

“He’s injury prone and doesn’t get games right now,” was another frequent complaint from people who’d have Kieran Tierney back in a heartbeat.

But more than anything else was the idea that he doesn’t “fit the profile.”

If the profile means young, cheap and relatively unheard of then he doesn’t fit it, you’re right. But that’s the profile so many, many of our fans have been moaning about all throughout the summer.

Fraser would not be cheap, not in relative terms, not in terms of his wages, and he is certainly not an unknown or any kind of project signing. On the contrary.

One person said he wouldn’t enhance our squad.

But that by its very definition is clearly illogical; a squad is a group of players, and adding a player in a position where we need at least a backup to the current starter, a player with his CV, would very obviously enhance the squad. If you want to argue that he wouldn’t be a guaranteed starter that’s worth debating, but I can’t debate nonsense and won’t even try.

The profile we buy to isn’t a catch-all and every year that I’ve been watching Celtic we’ve signed players who were exceptions to the rule of whatever blueprint we were following. When Rodgers came in the first time he signed Kolo Toure and Scott Sinclair to fill out a squad that was young and hungry but lacked those sorts of personalities.

We’re not talking here about Ibrox-style bling, someone whose reputation exceeds his talent, someone like Aaron Ramsey whose claim to fame was that he was one of the most high-profile Bosman’s of all time when he went to Juventus from Arsenal and quadrupled his salary.

But in football terms, that turned out to be what many of us said it was; a joke, a comedy act, a guy here on holiday and who contributed nothing but a penalty miss which will be on many a Celtic fan’s highlight reel for the rest of our lives.

Celtic has been down that road before, and we all remember some of the names; Juninho, Wright, Ljundberg, Gravesen, both of the Keane’s and on and on. To say we had mixed fortunes is an understatement.

You’d have taken Robbie Keane on a longer deal, as you would have Craig Bellamy, but even their names are synonymous with awful campaigns … Bellamy was there on Black Sunday. Both Robbie and Roy Keane played in awful Celtic sides and their signings were akin to acts of utter desperation … there was no thought process behind them.

I went through some of the reasons I could see why a deal for Fraser would be a good one.

A decent player, in a position where we require one, home grown and so ticking the UEFA box, and a lot of memories of watching him play where I thought “Yeah you’d be alright in a hooped shirt.” But there’s another one, of course, a corollary to all of them and it’s that he’s been playing at the top level in the game since he was in his early twenties and thus brings with him a level of experience that our younger players, in particular, would benefit from.

He is, in fact, this year’s Aaron Mooy and if you think that’s a daft comparison I suggest going back and reading the article I wrote at the time welcoming that deal … and the online storm of anger that we didn’t go out and sign “a big name” but instead brought in some 30 something who was past it and too slow and “not Celtic class.”

Some of us those same people are, I bet, not only decrying the possibility of signing Fraser but are furious that we haven’t gone out and spent a fortune replacing the Aussie international they, with their years of football wisdom, had never wanted us to sign in the first place.

And I am as guilty of this as anyone, of course, because my own reaction to the hiring of Ange Postecoglou was every bit as parochial and ignorant and I doubled down on the stupidity in an infamous tweet to a guy defending the appointment by asking him how he’d feel if we were also signing players from the J League, a prospect I felt at the time was not far short of scouring the lower leagues of England and elsewhere.

I trust the process now. Because I’ve seen it work. We all have.

We brought in the right manager – the subject of my article earlier today – and he will get the players he wants. Which is another thing people are banging on about; “When do we see the Rodgers signings?” Well, let’s presume that we are interested in Fraser. As he doesn’t’ fit the profile, it would be a fair assumption to say that he was most definitely a “Rodgers signing.”

Just not one that a lot of people want.

Which has already started with certain people expressing their “doubts” over the manager himself.

For a deal that, by the way, is still hypothetical and a maybe, and could in fact be nothing more than agents’ mischief. It is enough at times to make me wonder if in fact all we in the blogosphere are doing is sticking our fingers in the dyke whilst all around us the dam walls spring fresh leaks.

Yeah, we’ve diluted the media’s influence to shape negative perceptions about our club … but we can do nothing to stem the runaway imaginations of people who maintain their love for Celtic whilst continuing to believe that it gets everything wrong.

I’ll trust the manager, and the process, whoever is brought in.

But I can see already that there’s a good case to be made for bringing in experience, and so when I read that certain signing targets can be ruled out because they don’t fit the expected blueprint I want to laugh because what would fit in better with what we’re trying to do than to go out and sign someone who has been at the top level in football for nearly a decade, and thus can handle the expectations of playing Champions League football?

There is more to credit this idea than just ticking some boxes on the UEFA squad registration list for that competition, and whilst I don’t know if the story is true any more than I know if the half dozen other names in the media today are accurate, I can tell you that I will be behind the guy if he signs and will consider it a sensible piece of business.

It is time we all became a little calmer.

This window is not going to go the way all of us want it to.

Whatever business we do between now and the closing of it, there will be doubts and there will be questions and there will be anger. We can’t fill every position every fan wants to see filled and we won’t even try to … the squad is large as it is and there comes a point when you’re just bloating it for the sake of being seen to make signings.

Some think we need a new striker. Some a new midfielder enforcer. Some think it’s a left back. Some want a right back. Some want a new keeper. Some people want at least one more defender. Everyone has a view, but those inside the club have responsibilities which transcend those views, and a limit over which we can’t and won’t go.

The club also has spending priorities above and beyond the first team squad. We have major infrastructure changes in the offing, and those aren’t cheap. The desire by some to see a “net spend” will not be permitted to over-ride those things.

But whatever else we do, I expect at least one signing which does go against the accepted wisdom and which does fall outside the blueprint and the profile.

Because when we get to the Champions League we do need some older, wiser heads who have played at a level like that and who can act as calming influences when things are not going according to plan.

Is Ryan Fraser one of them?

Maybe and maybe not … but the idea isn’t as daft as a lot of people would have you believe. The signing of Aaron Mooy got just as much criticism, and we’re all pretty well agreed that it was an excellent piece of business.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, right?