Celtic “Five Wanted Positions” Would Show A Clarity Of Thought Missing Last Summer.

The transfer window continues to generate more heat than flame.

This is the way it always goes. But a handful of interesting stories have emerged in the past couple of days which are of more than passing interest.

A couple are transfer rumours which have been circling below the radar for about a week – the Chris Mepham story is one of them – and which have now started lighting up the boards, a sign that there is something in them, and a story from Stephen McGowan which piques my interest for what he says are Brendan Rodgers transfer priorities.

Now listen, McGowan has been wrong before but he does have sources at Celtic Park, although perhaps not in the places he once did. I used to refer to him as Lawwell’s Pet on here. That’s no longer the case, but if he’s spoken to people at Parkhead and if what he’s published lately is an accurate reflection as to our plans, then we’re entitled to be excited.

Brendan Rodgers, he says, is targeting five positions; a keeper, a left back, a centre back, a midfielder and a striker. There will probably be players in other positions as well, depending on how much he thinks we need, but those are the key priorities.

And this is all very simple stuff, all very uncontroversial, all very ABC. Which is why I applaud it. It makes sense. It fits what we’ve all been watching. It is well thought out. It is, therefore, the complete opposite of what we spent last summer doing, which made no sense whatsoever, which had an element of the scattershot about it, following no logic and no structure at all.

The first signing we made last summer was Odin Thiago Holm, an attacking midfield player. I don’t know a single fan who thought that with Hatate, McGregor and O’Riley on the books that we needed another one of those. What made that signing even more incredible was that we signed him without even having a manager in the building. That was someone with no idea of what they were doing simply filling random holes with players.

The thing that most summed up the incoherence of it was the decision to sign three players eligible to play in the Asian Cup at a time when we were already losing the bulk of our attacking options to that competition. It was as if we had given the controls to people who were more interested in looking for “value”, cheap players to sell on later, than they were focussed on whether or not any of these guys might be able to carry the team forward.

So, when I read something like that about the plan for this summer the first thing that stands out is that it seems that we do actually have a plan this time. And I presume that these are five players in addition to the current squad … which means that if we sign Idah that we won’t stop there and go looking for another forward as well, to make sure we have three good ones. It suggests that if we sign Bernardo that we’d still be looking for a midfield hard-man.

This is a small thing, but it’s a clear piece of evidence that the football department is now running the show, because it reflects what we watch every week, it reflects what you can see when you look at the makeup of the squad, and all of us should be pleased by that.

If we get the right players in those positions, I think we’d be very, very strong going into the next campaign … and that’s what happens when someone who knows what they are doing is working to a clear and simple blueprint.