The Key Thing To Having A Successful Summer Is That Rodgers Runs The Show.

I’m going to know who actually reads this by the comments.

I couldn’t believe some of the reactions to the article yesterday on Idah and Bernardo, a very straightforward piece – so I thought – with a simple point.

So many of the comments appear to be based on a complete misunderstanding or were being put out there by those who simply hadn’t bothered to read it.

The most amusing responses were from those who seem to think that after I’ve spent the last year haranguing the board over not backing the manager that I’ve switched to suggesting that they … shouldn’t back the manager. It’s absurd.

How could anyone who has read any of the content on this site believe for one second that I’m saying any such thing?

I think I write very clearly, or I try to.

Maybe I don’t. I thought I’d very clearly said that if we do sign Idah, I will consider that an outstanding piece of business. I’ve been banging the drum for that signing for months. But only at the right price. How much is too much?

I am less sure about Bernardo, but I’ll support the boss if that’s what he wants to do.

He’s shown us something, and I think he could do a job, but I am not convinced that he’s a replacement for O’Riley, as he doesn’t have the goals or the assists to justify that suggestion, and I suspect there are players out there who wouldn’t cost us £6 million who would do that job better.

“Aaah but he hasn’t played enough games to get those stats,” I can already hear some say; which is my point exactly.

If he was as good as O’Riley he’d have played every week and especially with Hatate not firing on all cylinders, and he hasn’t.

I like both of them. I am sure we have £12 million if we want to spend it. If the boss chooses to spend it on them then I’ll not complain or cry.

One argument surfaced over and over again during the comments both here and elsewhere, and that’s what I want to tackle in this piece; it’s that my suggestion that we might get three or four players instead of two for that kind of money was me basically shilling for Lawwell or Desmond or suggesting that we go low and cheap.

£3-4 million players are apparently not good enough for some people and that makes me laugh because of how absurd their argument is.

The most expensive signing we made under Ange in that first season was Kyogo at £4.5 million. Every single player Ange Postecoglou signed in his first two windows – Jota and Carter Vickers were loans, like these guys are – every single one of them cost us less than the £6 million people think is where we should be pitching our business going forward.

Most of them didn’t even cost half that.

The three most expensive players in that window were Kyogo and Starfelt, £4.5 million and £4 million, respectively, and Liel Abada, who cost us £3.5 million.

Giakoumakis cost us £2.5 million. Juranovic was £2.5 million. O’Riley cost us £1.5 million. Hatate was £1.4 million and Joe Hart, who gave us three outstanding years, cost us £1 million. Liam Scales cost us £500,000. We got Maeda in January on a deal where we paid for him in the following summer; he cost us just over £1 million.

So, when people tell me that we need to spend £12 million on two players just to stand still, and that we should do that without giving it at least some thought … well, what can I say?

You know what Ange spent to build that team? The guts of the double winning side cost us £18.5 million In total. Are people really suggesting that spending two thirds of that sum to basically stand still is something we have to do?

I don’t believe that at all.

Losing Bernardo is not like losing O’Riley or McGregor or even Hatate. He’s been a squad player. That’s what we’re talking about. I’m not sure that his overall contribution warrants any suggestion that we “need” to spend that kind of money.

Idah would be a bigger loss. No question. We will have to spend money bringing in someone as good as he is, and I’ll go you one better; I would sign him, ship out Oh and bring in another striker as well because we’ll need one. But we don’t need to spend £6 million on a backup striker for Kyogo and Idah, because Giakoumakis cost us half of that.

I am not a “net spend” zealot. Nor do I think that the size of the fee automatically confers greatness on a player. If that was even close to being true Ibrox wouldn’t have gotten near Fabio Silva because Wolves would never have sent him out on loan and he’d be drawing the attention of Real Madrid by now.

You see what I’m saying?

Keep thinking about Matt O’Riley. £1.5 million.

He makes a mockery of the idea that we should spend £6 million on a squad player, and he will leave Celtic, when he finally does, and I hope not for another year at least, for a fee which blows the Scottish transfer record to Hell.

So why is it a stretch to say that we could sign four players instead of two for the same money, and thus use that £12 million to strengthen the squad rather than just stand still? We could have bought four O’Riley’s for the Bernardo fee … we could have bought two Giakoumakis’ for what we are proposing to pay for Idah, and that’s if Norwich only want £6 million.

Do you know what’s more important than the spending of big fees?

That the manager himself selects and signs off on every single player. Ange Postecoglou did not succeed because he spent a massive amount of money. He succeeded because he had control over every penny of it, and he followed his own blueprint with the team.

If we know the manager is in charge of the process, then it won’t matter what the individual footballer’s cost, if he selects every single one of them to perform a specific task we will emerge with a better squad and a stronger starting eleven. I have no doubt of that at all.

It wasn’t the individual fees which caused the problem in the summer; it was who we let pick the targets and spend the money. It was that we let an unqualified bean-counter play Football Manager with the club’s actual cash. It’s that we let the chairman’s kid over-rule the wishes, and more importantly the needs, of the only guy who counted; the manager of Celtic.

There was no scenario in which that was going to succeed. I knew we had problems from the minute Rodgers said that “I’ll take who I’m given.” You might remember my optimism about the window up until that moment, and the black cloud which descended on everything I wrote from that moment forward. That was the day I knew we had problems.

But it had very little to do with the money we spent on each individual player.

Even if they’d spent twice as much on each player they signed it would have ended in disaster. You only have to look at who the three most expensive players were; they were Palma, Nawrocki and Lagerbielke, all of them £3 million plus, and we know what happened to them. The two defenders aren’t even the backup options. Nawrocki cost us more than Starfelt; it’s perfectly obvious which of those two is the better footballer.

One last thing; nowhere have I suggested that our budget is going to be less than what Ange spent, or even that it will be roughly equal to it.

I have no idea what the budget is and no-one else does either, and anyone who claims they do is lying.

But this is not a jo that’s going to be done on the cheap. It can’t be.

There’s too much of a mess to clean up here for us to do it on the cheap. The very fact we’re debating having to spend £12 million just to stand still is part of that, of course, and the people responsible for that have a lot to answer for, and they owe the manager big time for getting them off the hook.

They’re going to have to commit and give the boss what he requires, and it’s just that simple, and all of us will be looking for some “next level” footballers … and we’ll know them when we see them, because they’ll be experienced and have proven records. They don’t necessarily have to cost us the earth either; Rodgers knows roughly what he wants and I would be surprised if he didn’t also know who he wants. The wheels are probably in motion already.

I am hugely optimistic about this window, because it seems clear that Rodgers has won his internal battle and because I have to think those inside the club know what a shambles not only the last window was, but that it was part of a downward trend which started the moment they took control out of the manager’s hands.

The irony of this is that I suspect they’ll see it as a financial disaster as much as anything else.

Because the real beauty of the Ange Postecoglou first two transfer windows – and remember, they were the only two in which he did not have Mark Lawwell leaning over him – is that all our squad’s high value footballers, save for Callum McGregor and Alastair Johnston, were signed during those two windows.

Johnston is the only success story – and by that, I mean the only player about whom we are absolutely certain we could one day make a profit – to emerge from the four windows which were within the chairman’s son’s purview.

That’s a failure on a massive scale, and our business model depends on a much higher success rate from our signings than that. They know that for a brief period three years ago we were getting it on the nose, and it only happened after the football department was placed in the hands of the football people.

They would be mad not to re-introduce that.

Which is why I think they will. Which is why I think we’ll enjoy what we’re about to see.

It’s why I’m going to suggest that we not get hung up on the numbers or the net spend or anything else like that. Give the manager the keys to the control room. Let him design the blueprint and then pick every element of the grand design … and watch how much better we get.

That’s what matters, more than the fees … that Rodgers runs the show.