Lagerbielke Is The Poster Boy For Celtic’s Mistakes Last Season. The Boss Won’t Repeat Them.

This morning’s news that Gustaf Lagerbielke is being linked with a loan move out of Celtic Park shouldn’t surprise anyone. If there was one player in the squad whose Celtic career seemed over by the end of last season, it was his.

Lagerbielke is a decent player, but he never fit into Rodgers’ style. It was clear from the start that he was never going to be a permanent feature in a Brendan Rodgers team. This is one of the consequences of last summer’s strange signing policy, which burdened the manager with players he couldn’t use and didn’t want.

Looking back, it doesn’t get any less baffling.

On the day Brendan told the media he’d work with whatever the higher-ups gave him, he was tying himself to some bad ideas, and he must have known it. No manager should ever leave decisions of that magnitude to someone else.

Mark Lawwell was brought in as head of recruitment, a role that demands a specific skill set. Many of us doubted his suitability for the job, thinking he was hired more for his last name than his CV. But even if Lawwell had been highly qualified, he still wouldn’t have been equipped to build the manager’s team. That’s not what these roles are for.

Only an experienced football manager is qualified to make those kinds of decisions, and Celtic has been at its best when the manager has control over the squad. He must work within certain constraints, but when it comes to team-building, he should be the sole decision-maker. Problems arise when others at the club meddle in areas where they don’t belong.

Lagerbielke will probably leave Celtic and find success elsewhere, but this highlights the point: if we played a style that suited his strengths, he could have succeeded at Celtic Park.

This has happened before with signings from the Peter Lawwell era, like Patryk Klimala, who was signed as a counter-attacking striker when we didn’t play counter-attacking football. Lagerbielke is at his best when the team sits deep, allowing his natural attributes to shine.

He’s not suited for a front-foot team that plays a high defensive line. Had Rodgers been more cautious during that first window and trusted his own judgment over others’, we would never have signed him, not because he’s a bad player, but because he’s wrong for the system.

I wrote several articles expressing optimism about Lagerbielke, highlighting his defensive abilities. But that’s not enough. You have to fit the style and the manager’s vision. Under Rodgers, Lagerbielke never has and never will.

In fact, I can’t recall the last Celtic manager who played a style that suited him.

We are, by tradition, a front-foot team and don’t tend to sit back and play defensively except at certain times in Europe, and you don’t bring in a player simply for a handful of matches. You want a guy with this profile to be in the team every week.

This suggests that the scouting department didn’t fully understand that players must fit the system, not just possess talent.

Let’s be honest; no one who has watched both players genuinely believes Liam Scales is a better defender than Lagerbielke. Gustaf will play at a higher level, earn international caps, and likely fetch a good transfer fee when he leaves. Yet, because Scales fits the type of player Rodgers needed, he played most of our games at centre-back last season.

Rodgers knows Scales has limitations, which is why we’re looking to sign another central defender this window. Scales can’t be our centre-back alongside Carter-Vickers in the Champions League this season. It might seem counterintuitive to let a better player like Lagerbielke leave on loan, but it’s all about fitting the style and the system.

Last summer was a big mistake, one Rodgers is determined not to repeat, and hopefully, no Celtic manager will have to endure again. Good managers pick players to suit the way they want to play. Rodgers may have trusted those above him too much last summer, and if we’ve taken a bit longer to identify targets in this transfer window, I’m reassured by at least knowing that Rodgers himself chose each one and signed off on every deal.

All of them will play, because all of them will have been signed with a specific role in mind. That’s how it should have been done from the moment he walked in the door. Lesson learned, and now hopefully we can move forward in the next eleven days.