Celtic’s January Window Was Awful, But The Ibrox One Was Most Definitely Worse.

Looking back at January, the picture seems clearer than it ever has been. I remember saying after that window closed that our board had jeopardised our title hopes, but I also thought that Ibrox’s strategic failure was of a much larger order of magnitude.

Let’s do ours first. The failure to strengthen the left side of the pitch has been damaging, and I would say it’s even been costly. But it has not been catastrophic. I thought we had also erred, majorly, in not bringing in a quality central midfielder.

We strengthened in one area where we had to and one where I thought we needed somebody but where a lot of others thought we didn’t. In the end, I was more right than I knew; we lost Liel Abada to a situation not of our making, and so the signing of Kuhn was a really good move. He’s nowhere near as good a player … yet. It remains to be seen if he will do in the long term.

There are good signs, but he’s not quite there yet.

The signing of Adam Idah is obviously a real positive. I am heartened to have been right that he ticked the Rodgers boxes of pace and power and that those were the things that were going to matter most. I am still aggrieved that we didn’t get an option to buy, something we might regret if there are other interested clubs and a big fee involved.

But in signing Kuhn we made sure that the loss of Abada was not as keenly felt as it might have been. Idah is a better player than Oh. He has been more than an able deputy for Kyogo.

He did the most important thing; he allowed us to bench our talisman for a while as we reorganised the tactics and got back into the race. He isn’t just a good backup. You would feel confident putting him in as a starter most weeks. That signing has been very, very good.

I do not believe that our board should get one iota of credit for the title win if it is secured. Not one. Not one shred. They massively under-delivered and that should be to their eternal shame. I cannot believe they have gotten away with it, and I don’t regard Lawwell Jnr’s departure to have made the least difference to how I feel about the rest of them.

The chairman himself should go, and go before there is a single season ticket renewal form sent out. He sows doubt. He engenders mistrust. He has failed. No matter what this team achieves in the weeks to come, his tenure has been shambolic.

And yet … at the end of this season, if Celtic are champions, there will be a strong argument that the greater mistakes have been made across the city. In fact, there will be no argument about it. Their January window will come into focus and look like a disaster.

This is the thing with Lawwell; he is living proof that sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, and nobody in football is as lucky as this guy in that he has never been judged against people of competence and ability.

At Ibrox, they needed to do two things to give themselves the best possible chance; to sign a proven goal-scorer and to bring in someone who could actually defend. Those things might have cost them money, and it might not have been money they could afford.

They spent virtually nothing. They brought in Silva, a bling signing if ever there was one, and a guy who has not contributed anything of note whatsoever. They signed Mohamed Diomandé on a deal where they won’t need to pay for him until the summer. They brought in Cortes, the winger, on a loan deal with an option to buy.

Silva is, arguably, also a wide player. Why in God’s name did they go and bring those two in when they didn’t need a player in that role? Why did they bring in a central midfielder when it wasn’t clear they required one of those either? A centre back and a proven striker, those were the two things they had to go out and get. And they absolutely failed to.

Their defensive performance yesterday was an absolute mess. A good centre back and they maybe don’t lose those goals. They created chances in the first half. Thankfully all of them fell to Cyriel Dessers. A number 9 – and we all know Shankland is the guy they should have gone for – might have buried those. We’ll never know for sure, of course, but they could certainly have flipped yesterday on its head had they possessed one or the other.

A lot had to happen to get us here.

But it’s looking likely that the January window disaster is going to be at their club and not at Celtic, which is remarkable considering the mess we made of ours.

It’s also remarkable because it was blindingly obvious to people like myself what they needed to do to have the best chance, and yet the miracle man inside their club failed to grasp it, and yes there were financial elements to this, but we keep on hearing how healthy their financial position is and about how much the Champions League bounty next season is worth.

They have screwed up massively, and they escaped scrutiny for it only because our January window performance appeared, on the surface of it, to have been much, much worse.

That Idah has been a success is part of why we’re here, for sure, and he has been a much better signing than any of their January players has been … but I worried that our season would come down to the players we failed to get and the positions we failed to fill … hey, it still might.

But their mistakes were enormous.

Their screw-up is so, so much larger. If Celtic are crowned champions, their fans are entitled to ask how the Hell that came about, and their board owes them honest answers.

They won’t get them, but they should be asking.