The Celtic Squad Needs So Much Summer Work That It’s Vaguely Terrifying.

Yesterday, after listening to Rodgers talk about the decision to allow Bernabei to leave the club, I got to looking at the rest of the players who will be leaving over the summer, or who we would be seeking to move on.

Shockingly, I can see a scenario where a lot of them are guys who’ve only been signed this year. If you assume a top player, like O’Riley, will go as well and you look at what we’ve got left, the picture it paints is fairly horrific.

Starting from the back and working your way through the team, it’s horrendous how poor we look in several positions, even when there are allegedly a lot of options.

We will need a goalkeeper, and he’ll need to be a top one. There are no “project keepers”, that would be lunacy even by the standards of this board. We are probably way out of our league in going for the lad at Liverpool now that he’s got profile; we delayed too long on that one and any meaningful chance of getting him is almost certainly gone.

We need a left back. We need at least one central defender of real quality. And that will be a tough sell when we have so many of them at the club right now. We have the numbers to give the appearance of good cover, but the quality is severely lacking. We are going to need at least one, possibly two midfielders since we’ll be losing Bernardo and the need for a ball-winning hardman is as acute as ever was, and this before we sell a first team player.

Out wide, I’m deeply disturbed. Maeda, yeah, he’s a keeper. But who else is? Losing Abada is huge, and damaging and really pretty bad. Yang might offer something, but needs work. Palma, in the right team, one where we move the ball quick and keep him high might produce … but Rodgers isn’t convinced at all. Kuhn just scares me. His lack of game time is terrifying and highly suggestive of another huge, huge mistake. He will get his chance to prove us wrong.

We need at least one striker, and maybe more. If you surmise that Kyogo has a role to play – most of us do – then you need to ask whether Oh does, and I have my doubts. Idah will be going back to England, so that leaves us needing probably two front men and hoping that Kyogo finds his form in a better team or you’re looking at a full rebuild of the front line as well.

That some folks seem deadly serious about the idea of Mikey Johnston getting another opportunity is a clear sign of how far we’ve fallen in a very quick period of time. It’s only a year ago that this Celtic squad needed only two or three signings of genuine quality and you could imagine the fabled “next level” was in our reach. Jesus.

Kind of a lot has happened since then.

We are in a pretty shocking state, and facing another Ange style total reconstruction, and we’re heading into that not knowing who might be in the dugout, without a head of scouting and with no clear idea as yet which additional first team players we might lose.

Even if we win this title, it’s hard not to worry about what’s in front of us in the summer even if it doesn’t involve a new manager, because the rebuild is in front of us one way or the other, and having squandered so much time and money on the current desperately lacking squad we’re also going to have to move as many of them off the wage bill as possible first .. and again, that’s a self inflicted wound and a real problem for us.

Winning the title, and even the double, would make it easier to swallow but no less difficult to solve. In fact, that might lead some of our stupider and more arrogant board members to conclude that the strategy paid off and that it’s broadly been successful when nothing could be further from the truth.

So yeah, I’m a little bit worried.