Articles

Brendan Rodgers Re-Structured Celtic’s Transfer Policy Yesterday As The Board Sat Listening.

|
Image for Brendan Rodgers Re-Structured Celtic’s Transfer Policy Yesterday As The Board Sat Listening.

The AGM yesterday provided one massive moment for us to take towards the next phase of this campaign; the manager asserted his full control of the transfer policy.

At long last. He and the board will have hoped we don’t notice the difference between what he’s been saying up until now and what he said yesterday, but of course we do.

Things have changed. They have almost certainly changed for the better.

Our future is a smaller, better squad with more quality players in it.

That’s the upshot of what he was saying, and in January that policy will start to be realised. There is no question whatsoever that he is imposing his will on this now. He reiterated the need for quality, not quantity, for proven talent rather than project players, all stuff he’s done before.

But this time he did it in front of the top brass.

He did it sitting there beside them. He did it in a public forum with a room full of our supporters laid out in front of him, and not one of them contradicted him or clarified his comments or even tried to. So, it’s a change of approach whether it was agreed beforehand or not. It’s now a fact.

To be fair, the board have been swimming backwards on the signing policy since the summer.

When Peter Lawwell gave the chairman’s report in the accounts, he appeared to indicate a similar change in thinking when he acknowledged that a policy of signing projects wasn’t going to get things done and that those signings had to be married with the purchase of ready-made talent.

Rodgers had already aired his extreme displeasure in public and probably raised 99 kinds of Hell behind the scenes with Desmond.

That would have crystalised thinking.

That would have focussed minds.

Whatever happened, they were already indicating the change as far back as September. Hearing the boss lay it out yesterday makes it official.

This is clearly good news, perhaps the best bit of news to come out of that low-grade farce yesterday.

It’s also pretty clear from the way Rodgers is talking that he knows which players will be departing in the same window, with Kobayashi, Tillio and McCarthy already publicly aware that they’re going and I suspect that Mikey Johnston and a few others have been given the nod behind the scenes.

The squad will be smaller come February, but better.

Top of the list will be a striker, but I would imagine the left back position will be looked at and maybe the goalkeeper position. But more important, I think, than any of them is a quality midfielder and we have to have identified some targets by now.

But the important thing, more than the names, more than the positions, is that Rodgers sat there yesterday and confirmed that he is now in charge of transfer policy.

This is a far cry from the guy who sat in front of the media towards the end of that window and said that his job was just to coach the players the board deemed him worthy of getting.

Whatever it was that changed that situation – the fan backlash against those comments, the deep dismay they caused or Rodgers himself shaking things up behind the scenes – we’re now in a different place.

That’s all to the good. We can look forward to January with confidence now.

If we do good business there, the summer should take care of itself.

Share this article

7 comments

  • Darragh ó Conchobhair says:

    Get Ramsdale in.

  • Jim mcmillan says:

    This is just what i needed to hear…. well done rodgers, music to my ears. And ignore some of those embaressing green brigade flying palestinian & hamas flags, the real celtic fans have your back brendan. Just continue to make celtic bigger & better.. HH

  • SSMPM says:

    I think you’re right about the change of dynamic, no doubt as a result of Brendan’s displeasure and undoubtedly through Desmond. It seems to be two fold, one shifting from management of signings from the start of the season and from the power dynamic first time around with Lawwell.
    I’m not so sure about the club obtaining 3 or 4 quality January permanent signings per say as it’s usually always a more expensive time for signings or even if it will reduce the squad size yet. I agree that players will be going out on loan, and that we need more quality of course, but they’re still Celtic players. It maybe that we get in some better quality loan signings with an option to buy following the Weah, that we didn’t buy, model maybe at best coupled with one or two permanent signings.
    We pretty much all agree with the positional changes needed for upgrade, Celtic fans aren’t daft and neither is Brendan. HH

  • Bunter says:

    It’s got to be a really top quality goalkeeper before anyone else is signed. Joe is great and has done us proud, but is prone to mistakes, and I also feel he’s lost a wee bit of mobility as well.
    Our back line need to feel confident that the guy behind them will deal with things. I feel Joe has list a bit of that.

  • John Copeland says:

    My problem with the notion of smaller is better as far as the squad is concerned is thus ! Already since August the amount of injuries has continually been piling up putting a huge strain on the entire group . We are now hitting the Winter where as everyone knows ,is when the worst of the injury situations occur putting an even more severe strain on the team . So ,by all means cut back on the non essential players ,but keep half an eye on the horrible injury list which has been neverending this particular season alone .

  • Eldraco says:

    Priority is LB and GK not Striker, not perhaps not mibbie it’s priority. Holding mid F then stike. All quality,all proven and hang the expense.

    Get em in get the title sewen up get competitive in CL. Start touring emerging markets. Not rocket science then again you have Laurel and Hardy running things.

    • James Forrest says:

      We do need a striker. The entire front line is going to spend weeks at the Asian Cup, and we’ve got no-one to fill those roles.

      A striker needs to be signed on Day One. The rest, I agree with.

Comments are closed.

×