A Lot Of Celtic’s Squad Players Are Facing Up To Some Hard Truths About The Future.

Today Brendan Rodgers confirmed the Daizen Maeda rumour, and that is tremendous news for our club. But in confirming it, he might also have confirmed the slew of other information which was leaked from the same meeting in midweek where we got the Maeda story.

I feel pretty confident that the rest of it is accurate. I feel so confident about it that I am surprised that more people have not written about this stuff. Some almost certainly have, and I’ve missed it. But I am amazed that there isn’t more chatter on it.

Because he apparently spoke about the signings in the summer. He confirmed that Palma doesn’t fit into his system or his style of play, and doesn’t really have the skill-set he expects from a wide player. He confirmed that Lagerbielke didn’t impress him in training and that the decision on him was just about immediate. He is missing certain key qualities Rodgers wants.

And it seems he told the assembled gathering that Malik Nawrocki is just never fully fit, no matter what the Celtic coaching staff have put him through. In fact, Nawrocki was being signed in the first place as the backup to Carl Starfelt and Carter Vickers. So, he was never intended as a first-choice footballer but more as a squad player, and that’s what he remains … if that’s true it’s fair to say that he has no more chance of making it at this club than Lagerbielke does.

A large part of this squad will be made available in the summer. That’s the reality.

The Lawwell Experiment has left the manager with one gigantic mess to clean up, which is exactly what happens when you allow people to pick and choose the players the manager has to work with when those people are staggeringly unqualified to make that determination.

Everything we said about the summer window, and in fact Mark Lawwell’s entire tenure at this club – that it was scattershot, that it was incoherent, that it substituted the manager’s wisdom for that of people who do not understand football in the proper sense – has been confirmed in full. What a complete shambles it all is.

Not only was it a disaster, but it was a predictable disaster and if anything good has come from it, it is that it destroyed Rodgers faith in the judgement of those above his head, and forced him to fight for the right to do things his own way.

I knew the summer transfer strategy was in utter ruins the moment he made that dreadful, soul-crushing statement about working with what he was given; it didn’t take a genius to see that letting absolute amateurs fill his squad with players who might not be suitable for it was asking for trouble, and that’s how it’s turned out. It astonishes me that Lawwell senior is brazen enough to still be in his job. His son certainly could not have remained beyond this campaign.

It has been a predictable disaster. The geniuses at the top of this club ought to be absolutely ashamed of their presumption and arrogance in assuming not only that they knew better than Rodgers but that they had the first clue what they were doing at all.

We need to rebuild the backline here. We need a left sided attacker. We probably need another right sided attacker now that Abada is gone, and that’s depressing. Yang might stay another year, but I’m not convinced that he’s going to be at the club long term.

Holm, Kwon, the two centre backs, Tilio, Haksabanovic and others will all need to be shifted out the door, either permanently or on loan. Probably Oh as well, as I don’t think he has anything like what Rodgers needs. On top of that we need at least one keeper but probably two.

Rodgers knows what he needs. But what we learned this week is that he is also very clear on what, and who, he does not need.

A lot of these players are in their last few weeks as fully functioning members of this squad. It is too late for some of them to change minds. Others – like Palma – will have to show their very best or they will be joining others on the way out the door.