“There’s a moment after you cast the die but before it hits the table … breathe wrong and you’ll change the way it lands” – Will Bailley, The West Wing.
I love that quote. It’s a “never say die” quote. But in the context of this window, I don’t believe it anymore.
Today is Wednesday, and the transfer window closes on Friday night.
The easiest prediction I’ve made in recent weeks was at the weekend when I said that Brendan Rodgers would be forced by circumstances beyond his control to field virtually the same side that played against St Mirren, because there will not be any brand-new signings in the team.
And that now looks like a stonewall certainty.
Why do I say it looks like a stonewall certainty when most think we’ll make some signings anyway? It’s because today is Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thursday. The best we can do now is get players in on time to give Brendan Rodgers two days to train with new signings and integrate them into the team. That’s if they sign today. If they do, they’ll have Thursday and Friday. Anyone we sign after that will get no more than a brief hello with his team-mates.
Be honest with yourselves, some of you.
If you had been told when this window opened that we would go into the game against our rivals with a weaker team than the one which finished last season, what would you have said to that? If I’d said that there would be no strengthening of the squad at all until the final days—not the final weeks, but the final days—and perhaps it’ll even go down to the final hours, what would you have thought? This is a disgrace. No other word suffices.
I’ve called this window amateurish. It’s now embarrassing, and I’m genuinely concerned about the relationships inside Parkhead. Rodgers can’t be happy about this; he can’t be taking it lying down. They’re pissing on him, and we all know it.
Even some who would deny it can see what we do and hear the words he spoke at the weekend.
There’s no defending this. The insanity of it should be obvious now to every single fan. There’s no strategy behind this, unless it’s out of the darkest scenarios drawer, something more like deliberate sabotage. At this point, I refuse to rule that out.
Take O’Riley and his transfer; in his first statement to the media after leaving, he made it clear that talks between him and Brighton had been ongoing for months. So, the club knew Brighton was the likely destination, they knew a deal would go through, and they could have signed a player in his position before he was allowed to leave.
There’s no excuse for us not moving for targets sooner than this. No excuse, and I don’t care what they attempt to use in mitigation at the end of this window. I don’t care what lies the people who run our club try to make us swallow. There’s no defence for this.
We appear to have two key midfield targets; Rodgers allegedly wants both of them.
I doubt he’ll get them. I’m not even sure he’ll get either, but I know this: we’re most likely going to pay more than we would have if we’d moved sooner because we’re at the brink now, we’re at the closing stages, and the news last night that Augsburg have jacked the price up on us came as no surprise whatsoever. The people in charge of closing these deals have to be the stupidest people in European football not to have seen that coming.
Some of us have been shouting this from the rooftops for weeks.
We’re going to get squeezed, and we’ve done that to ourselves. I won’t be surprised if both deals collapse due to pure ego because some of the people at our club don’t enjoy being thwarted or made to look like fools, even when they’ve set themselves up for it.
I’m tired of this. I’ve had enough. If this window weren’t closing in a handful of days, I don’t know that I’d get to the end of it without unspooling.
I cannot believe that there are people who think the way we’ve conducted ourselves has been smart or even professional. I’ve seen bad transfer windows—too many of them to be truly surprised by this one—but this is worse by orders of magnitude than any I’ve ever witnessed, including the John McGinn window, which looks brilliant next to this.
As far as I’m concerned, every single person above the manager should carry the can: the gutless absentee shareholder who doesn’t contribute a single thing as far as I can see and appears to be hiding whilst the manager fights a two front war; the chairman who gets paid £40,000 and who we’re told makes no decisions, expresses no opinions, and wields no influence at all—which makes me wonder exactly how he has the balls to claim his salary; the invisible CEO who, believe me, is going to get some spotlight all to himself when this window shuts; and the finance guy who must walk around with a big smile on his face because all he can see is a rising bank balance.
That does usually happen when a company is asset-stripping; he shouldn’t feel too proud of it, and neither should any of the rest of them.
This is my last article on the transfer window until it shuts.
The people who care enough to be angry already are, and I don’t have anything more to say to them except to keep your heads up and your powder dry for now. I can offer no comfort at this point to anyone who thinks things will go according to plan; I’ve been saying for weeks that there isn’t a plan, not one that makes any sense anyway, and that what we have instead are a bunch of people hopelessly out of their depth making it up as they go along. And that’s the best-case scenario because the other is that they’re engaged in deliberate sabotage.
And then there are those who think this is alright, who continue to support the policy and the directors and who believe—because they’ve been told to believe—that this is normal, and who will be happy or try to kid themselves that they are even if this window shuts in the way that looks increasingly likely, and in spite of the manager’s clear and publicly expressed wishes and frustrations.
I don’t want to say another word to them.
What I and several others have been doing all these many months is trying to drum up enough noise and put on enough pressure that this window isn’t a disaster, because it’s been obvious for a while now that it was heading that way. And there have been people at every stage who have demanded that we shut up and let the club get on with it.
My mantra has been the same: Noah built the ark before the rain.
There’s no point in expressing displeasure, anger, or dissatisfaction, or trying to force the club to change course after the window shuts.
You’ve got to do it when there’s still time for it to matter. You’ve got to do it when it can still make a difference. And that’s why I’m saying no more on the subject; it’s too late now, we’re locked into this madness, and there’s no more time for a course correction.
The rain’s coming down, folks, and the wind is blowing a gale. The storm’s already here, and it’s certainly too late to get busy hammering away and trying to make something seaworthy … nothing that we say or do at this stage will make things one bit better.
We’re already in the endgame.
We’re either going to get what we need, or we’re going to get what we deserve.
It’s just that simple, and nothing any of us says now will change it.
Now we’re waiting for the flood, and hoping it never comes.
One last thing, and this is a little process announcement; I’m no longer going to respond to comments either on the blog or anywhere else. I write the pieces, you guys discuss them, and my adding to them doesn’t really serve us well at the moment. I’m not ignoring anybody. I’m not ignoring everybody. I’m just stepping back from that particular responsibility for a time.
The frustration of the Celtic Supporters is understandable.
A business that doesn’t reinvest is on the road to decline. Especially a business which has had significant boom years.
However the customers of Celtic need to realise that the owner and his management teams objective is to maximise profits and Return on investment. Dermot Desmond has made a fortune from his control of Celtic and Peter Lawwell, the architect of the deal which facilitated Dermot Desmond’s takeover and control ( but not purchasing a majority stake. Completely against Fergus McCanns intentions and structure), has made millions from his stewardship of Dermot Desmonds acquisition. Their priority is not success and progression of the club it is preservation of their market and business model. Staying ahead of RFC and flogging the “O** F**m label whilst not spending millions on investment or infrastructure is key to sweating their assets and bleeding the customers. Celtic fans need to recognise this. It won’t change. DD and PL need RFC, they will do their utmost to ensure RFC survives and retains their competitiveness.
@ EMC. very well put comment mate. Bottom line is profit. Keep their greed motivated, business model alive and don’t ‘waste’ money by investin in Europe. Absolutely nae ambition outside Scotland for the club. Only interested in makin what they can, while they can. For a club of our size, loyal support and history, theyre a disgrace. Get them out.
100% Correct!…….. I Sussed this out x3 years ago and I have Boycotted Them Since(not a Penny from me..
There’s bad and good but overall, real ineptness or perhaps something else which I or any of us can’t fathom.
MOR said he’d been talking to Brighton for months – we definitely should have had our scouts identifying Engels, Bogusz etc way earlier. As for the other positions, look at young Beck, away to Blackburn. He would have made sense, used to the league here and in England. I do think Valle could be a ‘player’ but it’s a lot of pressure on the young lad, as we all know we expect to win every domestic game and we were hoping this window would give us a chance to go further in Europe!
I can’t recall our scouts names and I agree with you calling out the board. A professionally run outfit would have a Head of Recruitment. Any private sector company would have this!!
What baffles me is: Why don’t we have someone who is in charge solely of running recruitment? What possible reason could we come up with as a club that we don’t have this fairly straightforward scenario in place? Because two incidents happened, which show there is no strategic approach. The first was Kyogo’s shoulder. I’d imagine Brendan gritted his teeth tightly as he told the board that we now had no striker at all potentially and that was how the fans would see it too. And boom, we suddenly upped our bid for Idah and got him back here. The second was the ‘Calm doon’ moment. Lawwell exposed in a face to face moment with how many fans feel. And suddenly, there was a flood of stories about bids for Bogusz, Valle appeared, Trusty and Engels also bid for.
It took a crisis moment or confrontation moment for ‘something’ to actually happen. There’s an old joke in business, where the client gives the design agency a brief and they say yep, it’ll be looking amazing in 3 months or something. Then nothing for 2.9 months. Then frantic scrambling around and working all night, the final day. And lo and behold, the client is presented with the new idea, the work all being done in the last 24 hours. That is also a slight reality. They know the target positions. They know the timescale. But they just ‘cannae be *rsed’ until they actually have to or else. And that goes back to vague management structure too. Because if they had someone in who would have that as their job, they could focus on what they are good at, being the People’s Front of Judea, talk a lot but let the directors of each department have autonomy to get the job done.
In short, it’s down to laziness too. It’s also societal. When Germany were failing, the federation worked with all the clubs to revatilise things and they won the 2014 world cup. Here, it’s how much money we can all get from sky and the same in England, it’s about more wealth. Development like you see on the continent is rarer. It does happen but….it needs to happen at our club! We should be bold. Take the b team on their own Euro tours. Take them out of the lower league level and enter them into multiple tournaments. (I also think the SFA and SPL have a lot to answer for in their short-sightedness). Let our recruitment department be run properly. Use calendar on their bloomin phones if they have to, each May an alert pops up to start scouting all of June and make bids in July. Takes seconds to do.
So why isn’t the simple stuff happening? It’s either laziness/greed. Or ineptness. Or if there’s another reason, what? The only thing I can countenance the timeline with is that other clubs won’t sell sooner. But like with Brighton and MOR, we can still have conversations much earlier………they have just over 48 hours and I suspect most of the activity will be done in the last 2
The reason for the PENNY PINCHING here is simple,they making the books look as good as they can to get top dollar for the club,as the intention here is to sell it and get out with as much money as possible.
No signings until the final hours of the transfer window,that’s to have saved the club a lot of money on wages,why pay out large sums of cash for the best part of 3 months from June-August when the clubs players that been have targeted at can pick up that tab for those months,think on those savings for each player bottom line being £10,000 maybe £30,000 for a high earner.
That’s a lot cash that can be divided up in bonuses for the suits,as money is all that matters to them.
Were only a matter of hours away from the signing deadline and Celtic are now scrambling to get new players over the line. This new guy Mateusz Bogusz is still playing his football in the US and if Celtic are to get the deal done they will need to carry out his medical over there. I’ll tell you this much….. the board made sure the Matt O’Rielly deal went through because that was money coming in not out. Its just a clear indication that the board won’t care if no players come in through the door as long as the money is…. GET THEM OUT
We have had 20 years of this sh*t from the board
Only a couple of transfer windows when ange was in charge were what you would call successful. Maybe a coincidence the only times there were NO Lawells employed by Celtic!
The boy from barca will be our last signing in this window without a doubt. Scandalous
100% agree
No lawwell was the crux of the matter.
I think you will find that since last year the Chairman now gets £80,000 per year.
Becoming more embarrassing by the hour, I’m tipping Valle on loan and one other, “That’s All Folks” from the Celtic Comedy Productions. How many times are Lawwell and his Board going to fool us under the guise of brinkmanship, they have no intention of spending much more than the 12-15 million they’ve already spent on Idah and Bernardo plus the loan fee for Valle.
By my reckoning there has been around 36 million come inwards during this transfer window, and we’re scrambling around at the last minute. It’s got to be complete unprofessionalism or treating the support as fools once again.
I’m very confident that the team have enough in their locker to beat the Ibrox mob on Sunday, But if by some miracle or a Beaton/Dallas intervention Sevco come away from Celtic Park with a draw or victory on top of a failed transfer window by us, then this board better be ready for all the criticism that comes their way.
It’s been obvious from the opening of the window James, they never had any intention of bringing the quality of players that Brendan said we needed. It’s about and only about the bank balance. The shareholders must be the primary concern. Will Brendan say anything publicly ? I doubt it myself. The board will think they’ve done their duty to make maximum profit for the shareholders. It’s just gut wrenching when you think how much the fans invest and how much those parasites take out.
OUR RIVALS ? ,there dead on thier feet ,like a punch drunk boxer ,our team could drop 3/4 of our players and will still run out winners,we celtic fc as a club are only interested in money ,as long as we happy with this then nothing will change james . 1-0 or6-0 . Happy campers.