Why Does It Look Like Celtic Has To Sell Before We Can Buy?

Look at the current slate of news around Celtic. Transfer targets we would not be remotely interested in – including Scott McKenna, as I pointed out earlier – and everything else focussed on who we are trying to ship out. Before we start, let’s give some benefit of the doubt.

As I’ve said before, the transfer window is open but there are no players or coaching staff at Parkhead or Lennoxtown right now because they are getting a well-earned rest, and I used those words without fear of contradiction. Some of these guys have played constantly over the last few years with barely a break in the summer. They earned it.

That means that anyone we do bring in is going to be sitting around bored until their team-mates are back. But that should be at the start of next week. If that’s the alibi, if that’s the benefit of the doubt, then it’s a lousy one. There are other considerations too, of course, like the fact our first game back is a Scottish Cup tie at home against Buckie Thistle and you would think that even if we’d lost half the first team squad to the Asian Cup, we’d have got through that.

But really, that too is a pretty weak excuse. It looks to most fans as if this is our club doing what it does; dragging its feet, penny pinching, going at a snail’s pace and really, there is no excuse for that since the club has known from the summer where we were short and exactly what was required here. You never would think there was a lot at stake.

The reason you get business done early is that it gives the players a chance to properly integrate into the team, and yes, the apologists can say that this was impossible when there are, in fact, no players to integrate with, but if there are no signings on Monday what then? If the club decides that we can go into that Scottish Cup game without them, what then?

Hypotheticals yes, but this is what I wrote about yesterday when I said that perception is reality and this board has behaved exactly like this before and hamstrung managers in the same way. With the Lawwell influence now evident across the club a lot of us are conditioned to expect the worst, the very worst, and we’re mentally prepared for it, which isn’t to say that fans in the main are just going to accept it. Nor, I suspect, will Brendan Rodgers.

The perception is made worse when you consider that all we appear to be doing right now is trying to move players on. Are we in a position where the manager has to sell before he can buy? Is that what they are telling him? Because surely that cannot be the case. We are still trading at a significant transfer surplus from losing Jota, so that would be ridiculous.

Is it the wage bill? Whose fault exactly would it be if it was? Who sanctioned ten incoming players in the summer, when all we needed were three or four of them, of the right calibre? The squad is a bloated mess, and it’s full of project players who aren’t going to cut it. So is that the fault of the manager? Why should he be the one who suffers for it?

Since Lawwell came in, as many players have come in and gone straight out of the club as have made it and are still in the squad. Ange, in his first two windows, barely had a single failure. Every one of them went straight into the team and improved it. What did we do right in those first two windows with Ange that we’re not doing at the moment?

Say whatever you like about Ibrox, but they are busy. They are going after high profile players, and whilst I think their obsession with bling is ridiculous, if even one of those type of signings can produce anything close to their reputed worth, we will be in big trouble here if our board doesn’t get its finger out. They might have a moronic transfer policy but it is ballsy, it is ambitious, it is designed for shock and awe and they aren’t afraid to take a punt.

They get the stakes here, and they are not scared to throw resources at it. Our board talks about proceeding with caution but what I see is a club that lacks ambition and a board that lack guts. Why should we be allowed to have, and keep, nice things when they can sell our best players for huge profits and look like geniuses doing it?

But we have benefited for years from Ibrox’s bad management, and if we emerge from this window having cleared out a lot of deadwood, including some of the players we’ve just bought, and without at least two first team-ready players – the club across the city certainly will – I don’t see the summer going any differently. Trust in this board is at its lowest point in years.

I agree that we need to move players on. There are too many of them at Celtic Park who are simply not going to cut it and they need to be shipped out. But if the reason we haven’t gotten anyone in yet is that the board has told the boss that people have to go first … well that stinks to high heaven. That’s just not right. And people are entitled to ask if that’s what’s going on.

Until we bring someone in these questions will remain.