GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - AUGUST 04: A general view during a William Hill Premiership match between Celtic and Kilmarnock at Celtic Park, on August 04, 2024, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Back in the sands of time, as Ronald Reagan was gearing up to fight the 1984 general election, one of his senior aides, Stuart Spencer, was recorded at a meeting of top campaign officials admitting that the White House had no strategy for the race.
“The most striking thing I discovered is that they don’t have a goddamn thing in the pipeline. They don’t have an idea,” he said.
And months out, they still had no idea.
Reagan ran in 1984 without any kind of coherent blueprint for how he would govern in the next four years. His entire political philosophy was best summed up two years later when he candidly told a meeting on the Iran-Contra scandal that they should, “Avoid specifics. Declare that whatever we’ve done is consistent with our policy.”
And two years prior to that meeting, his campaign people had drawn the same conclusions.
The campaign they ran has become famous.
It’s one of the greatest political victories of all time… because it didn’t promise a damn thing. It was encapsulated in an ad called “Morning In America” which eulogised the four previous years and told the country that if they wanted the good times to continue, they should vote to re-elect the President.
By the end of his second term, he was roiled in scandal and his administration was on the brink of collapse.
So was his health; his son later admitted that he’d suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s.
It may have been one of the reasons that he let his advisors run amok and make up government policy on the hoof, which was the cause of most of his problems.
There is a story that Reagan liked to tell people; it’s a story that on the surface is about optimism, but I actually think it’s a cynical story, about people’s willingness to believe whatever keeps them smiling.
It’s about a kid who wakes up on Christmas morning, goes running downstairs to get his presents, and his dad takes him outside and points to a large mound of manure. The kid is not deterred in any way; he grabs a shovel and starts digging with the words, “There must be a pony in here.”
Well, no kid, sometimes what you get is just a pile of shit.
And sometimes people who don’t have a clue what they are doing can present a superficial vision which suggests great competence and a strategic outlook.
But that’s just a different sort of shit.
And with that, we get to the point; the summer transfer window season, 24-25, is closed.
And it closes not with a bang, but a whimper.
There are people who will call this a success. It won’t surprise anyone to know that I am not going to call it that. There are People who will present this as a triumph for the board of directors. I am certainly not going to call it that.
But I’m underwhelmed rather than thoroughly disgusted, and this time last week I would have been thoroughly disgusted had things progressed along the lines they seemed to be.
Underwhelmed is a weird emotion.
It’s not great disappointment. Disappointment, ha! I’m past disappointment. I’m past being disappointed in these people. These pygmies. These amateurs who run our club. I’m past disappointment with them. It’s over. It was over a long time ago.
They don’t know how to run a modern football operation. They don’t have certain parts of the skill set. They’re good commercially. But nobody deserves a pat on the back because we’re not a basket case like the club across the city.
This is a window where we have done the bare minimum.
We replaced Matt O’Riley. We all knew we needed a centre back, a left back, and a goalkeeper – the mission critical positions. We’ve signed three midfielders in Engels, Bernardo and McCowan. And McCowan, I’m happier about than you might believe.
There are people who are going to say “Ah, but they spent money.”
Well, we haven’t spent money, actually; our transfer trading for this window comes to £41 million in the door and £31 million out the door.
So again, this club has a transfer surplus and key areas of the team remain problematic. Aside from the transfer cash we’ve taken in, we’ve got guaranteed Champions League wonga; not one red cent of that money went to the manager for players. Not one bean.
To not use it, you might as well not have it.
Even spending that £10 million transfer trading surplus, and finishing the window revenue-neutral, was too much to ask these people to contemplate. We needed a third striker who the manager wasn’t allowed to have. We needed another wide player and he didn’t get that. We needed a permanent solution at left back instead of a sticking plaster.
So, I have no problem saying we did the bare minimum, because that’s exactly what we did. A massive trading profit, more money to pile on top of the rest, and key parts of the side still without reinforcement and one – one – player who goes straight into the team ahead of a player currently at the club, the first in five windows, so congratulations for that I suppose.
The squad is not significantly stronger. The manager’s options are not significantly better.
So why underwhelmed and not disgusted? Because we didn’t go backwards. Are we that much farther forward? Not that much, but an inch in the right direction.
They don’t get a medal for that, any more than they get one for not bankrupting us all these years; this club has been “getting by” at executive level a long time now, and I think one of the reasons that these guys won’t go is that they know that the next set of guys can come in here and run this club even better than they do and then all the magic dust they sprinkle on their fan-club to get them to sing their praises will be revealed for the handful of sawdust it is.
They’ve deprived the manager of a proper summer to bed in the new signings, a decision only non-football people without the first clue, and staggeringly unqualified, could have made.
We know Adam Idah could have been signed a hell of a lot sooner and a hell of a lot cheaper had we not had to push the deal through in a panic after Kyogo got injured and even the happy clappers could no longer kid themselves about how reckless our policy choices had been.
The sight of Mikey Johnston playing through the middle as a striker will do that to you every time.
Even Engels could have been signed quicker; he was telling people close to him that he was coming to Celtic weeks ago. That story has been online this whole time, it’s widely reported. So why didn’t we move sooner?
Because we wanted Matt out the door before spending. Disgusting choices to force the manager to live with; bean-counter choices, not the sort football men would make.
And nobody is going to tell me that we couldn’t have spent £1 million on Luke McCowan weeks, if not months ago. Our closest competitor was Hibs, and they didn’t even get around to offering £800,000 until this afternoon.
But Celtic left that to the last day to announce it, along with Engels. Why? I’ve told you why: real work plus the appearance of work equals actual work.
These people did the bare minimum.
They did virtually nothing for the whole summer and then, on the last day, announced a couple of big deals to get everyone off their backs.
Lazy pricks and incompetents have been getting away with this stuff for more years than I’ve been on the planet. I know this because I was one of the lazy pricks once.
I worked with masters of those dark arts; I was on a school groundskeeping squad that filled empty branded Parks Department bin bags with full branded Cleansing Department bin bags to make it look as if we’d been out in the rain all day instead of sitting in the van drinking coffee – and me in the back reading some Stephen King novel. I know this stuff by heart.
Because we left it to the last day, I’m sure that certain deals we hoped to get didn’t go through. This is the suicidal stupidity that could have cost us big time, and that can’t happen again. And everybody who’s in such a hurry to congratulate the board of directors better stop and think about whether congratulating them for that strategy makes any sense.
It was needless and it was reckless, and who said so?
Blogger guy who just likes to moan?
No, the manager of Celtic himself said it, at the end of last week.
Argue with me? Don’t waste your time; you’re arguing with Rodgers, and you better understand that before everything else. He knows this is a shitty way to do transfer business, and he said it in plain language.
He acknowledges that this window has been a farce. That’s why he’s talking, again in plain language, about rebuilding the scouting system into something that fulfils his purpose. And that job is so long overdue. This club needs a director of football to go with it – someone who works with the manager and according to his needs rather than against him.
The risk-taking has been mind-blowing.
What people are congratulating these guys for is betting the house and the kid’s university fund on red or black at the casino and getting the right colour. If a relative did that to you, would you pay tribute to them for guessing right, or would you kick them squarely in the nuts? You know the answer, I won’t labour the point.
Here’s the question some of you will be asking.
I sound disgusted. So, why am I not disgusted? Why am I, instead of being disgusted, actually simply underwhelmed? And I’ll tell you, as I said, we’ve made progress. Small steps, an inch or two maybe. But progress is not to be knocked.
The thing is, when was the last time we paid so much money on average per player in a transfer window? We knew we were going to lose Matt O’Riley anyway – all of us did. But I also think all of us expected his replacement would be some £2 or £3 million player.
The logic would have been, “Well, Matt only cost us £1.5 million when we signed him, so if we spend £3 million, you never know.”
Except, we’ve been down that road before. And before. And before.
And although Luke McCowan hasn’t cost the earth, and we brought in the boy from Spain on a loan fee, our backup keeper only cost a million, and a first-choice keeper was also a free transfer, the four big signings have been big, and they’ve cost a few bucks.
Bernardo and Idah didn’t make the squad stronger than it was at the end of last season, but we would have been a weaker squad without them. Everyone involved deserves credit for spending the money we did on them.
That was a big deal, and I remember when I wrote the piece about how it was a lot of money to spend to stand still and got a lot of stick for it. I told people “I’m only pointing out the facts and speaking sensibly.” Not that some people reacted sensibly, but I stand by what I wrote and I spoke sense. And I said then that if we spend that money on those two players, compromises would have to be made elsewhere, and that is exactly what happened.
This board was never going to spend more than it brought in.
No chance. They don’t do it.
And I’ve said my piece on that already in this article. It makes me sick to think that they’re about to ask fans for more money when they won’t spend what we already have. Why they need to feel like they’ve made a trading profit coming out of this window rather than spend on the team, putting it on the park where it belongs, I can’t even fathom. It makes me sick.
But knowing that that’s the policy, I explicitly warned people not to get their hopes up in the event that we spent £12 million on two players who were here last season on loan. “That will affect the manager’s budget,” and of course, it did.
But the club didn’t have to spend that money; they didn’t have to sanction that. The club could have taken the attitude that it was too much to spend just to maintain the strength of the last squad. They did it, quite possibly because Rodgers gave them no choice, but they did it anyway – they spent the money, they splashed the cash on those two guys.
We spent £6.5 million on a central defender, the only player in this transfer window who automatically enhances both the team and the squad.
I regard that as a personal triumph for the manager.
He must have made a good case, and he must have got his way because that’s more money than I thought we would spend on that position for one player. And we did in the end, and we backed the manager’s judgement, and that is all to the good.
And on the Engels deal, what can you say?
The underwhelming feeling that I have is certainly nothing to do with that signing.
It’s about opportunities that have been missed elsewhere and the opportunity to really push the boat out in terms of the midfielder, the wide area, the forward line.
But I can’t complain about that signing, and I won’t complain about that signing – a piece of genuine quality. To actually have Matt O’Riley leave and bring in somebody who can fill those shoes and can do it quickly … amazing. And they’ve spent a lot of cash on getting that guy.
That is a signing vastly in excess of anything I would have believed we would do in this window when it opened. The only signing, along with the one for Trusty, that did not just meet but exceeded the expectations.
And again, let me go back for a minute and talk about Bernardo and Idah. I only mentioned them briefly, and I want to discuss that in more detail.
When you spend £4.5 million on a midfielder, some people will naturally believe he’s the replacement for the guy going out the door. It’s to the credit of the club and the manager that we paid the money for Bernardo and then Engels on top.
He has something, does Bernardo, and he adds real quality to the midfield. And it’s a big important signing, not just for the squad’s depth.
And spending £9 million on Idah? I wouldn’t have believed that was going to happen in a hundred years. I’m not even sure we should have spent that kind of money on Adam Idah, but if you want to talk about the manager getting backed with serious money, that’s an example of it right there.
I know it’s cost him in the short term; he’s had to make compromises elsewhere and has probably lost out on a third striker because the board won’t go beyond a certain point, and shame on every one of the penny-pinchers who never had to build a football squad for not giving the boss even the luxury of that additional player.
But when it comes to the manager’s first choice, he got what he wanted. He got that striker, the player he thinks can make a big difference, and they paid that money for him – over and above what they wanted to pay. They paid it because Rodgers demanded it, and Rodgers got his way.
The kid from Spain, who I’ve not criticised, no matter what some people evidently believe… Again, people who read without understanding, or people who just don’t read and think they understand based on a headline or something they’ve heard about the article from someone else. Or because they’ve read some negative commentary on Twitter or Facebook and just can’t help but join the herd like brainless sheep, one following the other.
You know what else I didn’t I say during those articles about how underwhelming that signing was, considering we waited two years for it and got a loanee – some 20-year-old kid? Well, what I didn’t say, and what I’ll say now, is that I would take him over some of the other options being talked about, like Owen Beck, all day long.
It doesn’t mean that the policy is right. It doesn’t mean we’ve arrived at the right conclusion after a two-year search, because we are miles away from where we need to be after waiting for two years for this problem to be solved.
When the manager talks about bringing in a player to “compete” with Greg Taylor, I want to scream, because by this point, we shouldn’t be looking for a player to compete with Greg Taylor. We should be getting ready to play a guy who has hoisted Greg Taylor off his feet and planted him firmly on the bench or in the stands.
But progress comes in many forms. And I think we emerged in better shape in some ways than I would have thought, and as usual some of that is down to the boss himself.
It helps the board – and how glad they must be of this – that Nicholas Kuhn looks like a new player, and is a triumph of Rodgers’ development skills. It helps that Luis Palma has done enough to convince the manager he has a future, and that Maeda can play as a striker in a pinch when needed. Although Brendan has known that for 12 months and didn’t consider him a third choice at any stage.
Thank God he didn’t make that point sooner, otherwise the world would never have heard of Norwich’s reserve, Adam Idah, because they certainly wouldn’t have signed him in January.
They have done the bare minimum.
I don’t think we’re Champions League ready yet, and in a better, tougher group we would be in real bother. Whether we have enough to get past the teams we’ve drawn is going to depend an awful lot on the order of the fixtures and what state the team is in when each game comes up. If we get a couple of injuries in certain positions, we are in bother.
And that £10 million transfer trading surplus will end up an albatross around the necks of this board – and it should be. Maybe they’ll get lucky in that regard.
So, no, I’m not getting out the pitchforks.
I already thought that all these people should have been shamefaced and walked when they failed the manager in January, and then they’ve gone through this entire window in the same lackadaisical fashion. If they had any sense of responsibility or accountability, some of them would walk. Because it has been a shambles, regardless of the outcome, regardless of the fact that we’ve gotten a semi-reasonable result out of it. I won’t call it a good result, it’s semi-reasonable progress, but only by an inch. And it’s no less of a shambles for that.
In the last two press conferences where Rodgers spoke about this, he talked about lessons being learned. He talked about changes he wants to implement—things he believes we need but don’t have behind the scenes.
Yes, revamping the scouting system is part of that. And hiring someone to take responsibilities away from Michael Nicholson, who is clearly not equipped to deal with them, should be another. Call it a technical director, or a director of football, but for God’s sake Celtic stop pissing about and put in place the infrastructure of a modern, forward thinking club.
Their whole sense of priorities is wrong, wrong, wrong.
This club’s sense of what its mission is, and the directors’ sense of what their place is, are both fundamentally flawed. “Balance sheet before team sheet” remains the active policy of the Celtic board. Rodgers may have won some of his battles, but he’s still fighting his war, and he will have to fight every day he is here, for everything he wants.
I don’t intend to abandon him in that fight, and I don’t intend to step back just because this window has shut.
This guy has only just started his revolution, and if we want to keep him here beyond this campaign and the next, he’s going to need support—a hell of a lot more than he’s had from certain people this summer, people who’s faith in this board is akin to that enjoyed by Trump, more cult-like than directors of any football club have ever had as far as I can tell, and every bit of credit they get is a bit stripped from the people who genuinely earned it.
But there are things that can wait, and there are things that will keep and is a blessed relief to put them and this subject to bed for a spell. I’ve done my bit; I’ve held their feet to the fire for the whole summer. And right now, I just want to cheer on my team.
This is the longest piece I’ve put out over the course of the transfer window, and I trust that my feelings on it are 100 percent clear: it’s been a failure, but it hasn’t been a disaster, and that, I suppose, is good enough for some people. I doubt the manager is entirely satisfied, and I have a feeling he will make that clear in his own way and in his own time.
This is the hand he’s been dealt. These are the cards he’s been given. And I had no doubts about Rodgers at the start of the window and I don’t have any now. There are opportunities, both domestically and in Europe, and we have to focus on them for a while.
But that doesn’t mean that Michael Nicholson, the CEO, Chris Mackay, the finance guy, Brian Wilson, and the other board members who as far as I can tell offer nothing, get free pass.
Nor does Dermot Desmond, the largest shareholder, who delegates responsibility to a handful of his cronies and lets them do things in this business that he wouldn’t allow in any other company in which he has an interest. This is a guy who doesn’t even have a majority of the shares, but he controls the board like they’re his hand puppets.
Which brings, me at last, to the chairman, whose feeble defence for this fiasco is that he doesn’t do anything anyway—nothing except draw a salary and drag the whole club’s credibility into the gutter with a large section of the fan base.
As long as he’s there, no one trusts any of them, and he is the one most in need of considering his position because our perception problem is overwhelmingly down to his presence, and if he does nothing anyway we’re paying too a high price for him.
But this club is more than they are.
Even if they’ve forgotten that, I haven’t, and most of the fans haven’t.
That’s why, for a while at least, we can turn our attention to what happens on the pitch, where the real stuff happens. Where the successes are made, where the points are put on the board, where the trophies are won. Where the glory and the glamour originate, and where the credit belongs—with the manager and the players.
Where it’s always been, and where it will always be, with those of us who care about Celtic more than we care about Celtic PLC.
Unlike you James, I am disgusted. My interpretation of a football club is to have the absolute best team possible without putting the club at financial risk. Celtic do not operate that way, they try to con us with record signing crap when we get £28m for one of our players, so paying out £20m for two players is no big deal. They make a trading profit out of the window when we already have a huge reserve of cash. What in the hell are they stockpiling this massive amount of money for?? If we had went and really made a statement with more quality signings we could have possibly done really well with that CL draw, bug alas no, money is the only prize our board are interested in. Was Celtic founded on and for corporate greed? No!! But that is sure where we are now. Maybe time to remove the Brother Walfrid statue as his legacy and our club have now nothing in common, in fact we just try to make even more money from that wonderful history.
Why are we stockpiling money?
Best guess: The Board are under instructions to find a buyer for the Club. The cash reserves will be used to part fund the buyout of the the existing shareholders. Nothing else makes sense.
Yes, that’s right. The money we, the true Celtic fans pile into the Club on a regular basis, which is supposed to be for the benefit of the team on the pitch, will be used to part fund the buy out of Desmond, Lawwell et al. I’ll bet that’s got you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. No! Me neither!!
As an aside, there is no Scottish football club that requires £60-70M in excess funds, especially when the product on the pitch requires significant additional quality.
No matter what gets written the Happy Clapping Board apologists still haven’t managed to provide any explanation to the contrary.
I’ll just finish with this – Sack the Board, Lawwell first
It’s a difficult one I think as there are different ways to look at it I think. I see it like this , over the window we brought in 2 keepers, signed 2 loanees from last season, and in the past 3 days brought in 4 (3 on deadline day). Essential or not that’s a lot of signings for 1 window. Says much that even with 8 signed in the window folks and probably th manager wanted more. But that would be a 11 or 12 players!!! You can’t and don’t do that (unless u basket case Chelsea)… It does show how mismanaged the recruitment has been past several windows when you take into account the outgoings this widow too. As I say different ways to look at it but realistically for a single window? The crappy timing of the last 6 signings is another matter mind.
Agree 100%. A CL with 8ganes and a possible chance to make last 16 and we end up with a 10m surplus and NONE of the CL money spent. It’s shockingly bad and low ambition.
Absolutely spot on with everything in this article James.
£10,000,000 trading surplus = directors bonuses to be paid on profit not team performance.
Rough calculations 10 more player departures ( which needed to happen by the way) than incoming players saving £300,000 a month?.= healthy directors bonuses on there way.
Love the bit about the park workers filling bin sacks with other bin sacks as didn’t want to get their oilskins wet. LOL
Great article James, can’t disagree with you on anything. It’s crazy to think that despite breaking our transfer record twice I still feel like we’ve missed a massive opportunity to push on. The money was there but the will on the boards behalf was lacking. I’d like to hope we are exploring the free market, as there are some great options who could enhance the squad. HH
Fantastic piece….Well written/delivered and factual ?
Couldn’t Agree More….
Point made, but don’t forget you are the one that stated earlier that we should trust the process to deliver.
Mikey was wanted by West Brom at the conclusion of last season, but Brendan wanted to look at him again in pre-season. The decision to sell could have been made immediately after the US tour. Yes, Nicholas Kuhn is like a new player.
I agree with with your summation of the Transfer Period.
After the squad’s performance in the States and their first three recent games,
our team players are combining much better than they did last season.
If Matt was kept for another season, I would be reasonably confident, in that we have a more competitive team for the new UCL. I read that Matt requires ankle
surgery?
100% Correct. The management of this business are beyond incompetent and are asleep at the wheel. No professional ability or competence. They make the Whites and the Kelly’s look like Apple!
That they sat on their hands awaiting conclusion of MOR transfer, even though they had the capital available already and could maximise their costs of investment early as possible is shocking. The premium they have paid in stalling their investment/ purchases probably runs to several millions. In addition they will have missed out on several opportunities that I expect no one will know about other than the clubs they tried to low ball. There’s also the incompetence of Adam Idah lack of buy clause in his loan agreement which again I expect has cost several million. You wouldn’t trust this management with any capex plan. They are an old fashioned, tight, reputational damaged dinosaurs who anyone with a brain could predict will wait to the very last minute before being forced to pay a premium for the incompetence and difficulty and protracted discussions they themselves create. Lucky for them they have an owner who indulges them and is happy to take the comprehensive dividends whilst knowing they are incompetent but realising he’d have to pay more only to get decent management in. Shocking. Absolutely shocking.
Well said Eddie.
Great articile James well written and presented outlining all the failings this board has overseen this & other transfer windows and i for 1 believe your comments hit the nail squarely on the head.
Hi james. A bit like yourself, don,t know if i d call it a success but still feel relatively satisfied. Not with the draghing of heels, these guys shouldve been integrated much sooner. But we have cleared out most of what the manager had forced on him last year. Yes, we have spent less than we brought in and you could feel Brendans frustrations but also, he did say he would rather spend 18 million on 3 quality players than 10 projects. If next time around we add without selling too many then that could be the way for steady progress
That’s an astute, spot on analysis and ah would also agree that ‘underwhelming’ is the word. It seems like a window thats been in the end, hurriedly worked tae pacify the support before they had a full scale revolt on their hands. And although they’ve lost nothin and gained a profit, they’ve spent more than they intended. Fact is, realistically theyve came up short again. Imo they couldve and shouldve done more and they havent.
On transfer deadline day on Sky Sports it was a joy to watch some real COMEDY GOLD.
We had transfers galore in millions of pounds changing hands at clubs our very own had been involved it itself.
Then we had a couple sevco stories thrown in,Wright goes to Birmingham for £300,000 and Barbie £500,000 to Blackburn,with the quote this gives transfer money for Kojak to get sone players in the door,oh ma sides.
Especially with Norwich due a cut of Barbie’s fee.
Given that only one Transfer Window in nearly 30 years has been conducted in a professional timely way, with all transactions being completed in a timely manner rather than last minute, either paying a “ wankers premium” or missing out completely it tells you exactly how competent the management of that business are……
In retrospect, it seems the strategy was, as much as it is possible to discern one was Goal Keeper, Idah and Bernardo – takes us back to the end of last season – but no new spend until O’Riley sold. Quite why they didnt look down the line and say we have a CL dividend coming use that, I do not know. But if Matt had not been sold, I dont think we would have seen our new Centre Half or Engels.
On MacCowan, I think he is a tremendous signing – excellent crosser of the ball -can put it on a sixpence and at last we have someone who can score direct from free kicks a la Juranovic
Unbelievably I can’t find a single flaw in your statement, agreed all deals could, should have been done earlier, in the close season. We are still a couple of players light considering Kelly, Vata and Iwata have all gone.
Absolutely spot on, James.
Couldn’t have written it better myself.
You’ll also notice that, no sooner had the transfer window closed, there were a handful of Lawwell lickspittles putting out articles saying this transfer window proves he was not involved. Who are they trying to kid? Themselves?
£10M transfer surplus
£100M+ in the bank
Major BR targets missed
Announcing final day deals to paper over the cracks
Half a dozen first team ready players short
Two left backs out of contract in 12 months
Happy clappers able to write about the massive success of the balance sheet
And on, and on
A blueprint for a Lawwell transfer window if ever you’ve seen one.
Make no mistake. BR had to drag these transfers over the line with the Board kicking and screaming all the way.
Sack the lot of them.
In a word, superb
We have moved 17 players out, none of them starters except MOR.The mistakes of the previous windows have largely been corrected and a bloated squad reduced.
None of the 5 players sent out on loan will never be good enough and probably not return.
I make it we have currently a first team squad of 26 players (the number the manger wanted to work with) with only 3 not good enough Baines,Welsh and Nawrocki.All this with a £10 m profit.Whats not like?
.
Terry the Tim , boards arse wipe,what about our left back, Taylor is just about good enough for pishy SPFL,no use in Europe, even so if Taylor gets injured who replaces him? no one good enough,so yes the boards done good, NOT!!;
Thank goodness that’s the window closed, we can now get on with watching the football. As far as happy, underwhelmed or unhappy about the window goes, then reasonably happy would sum up how I feel. I can’t understand why they leave it so late but the same seems to happen at most clubs, it would seem to me that it’s all part of the circus surrounding modern day football.
Some people seem to have a bee in their bonnet surrounding the left back position at our club, Gregg Taylor is the man who has mostly held down that position since KT departed. In my opinion he has done a pretty good job for us, especially when going forward and linking with our attacking players, defensively he lacks a bit. Most wing backs these days are not great defensively, even the so called best of them in the EPL are not great defensively, think Robertson,Trippier and Shaw all good going forward but not great in defensive situations.
I hope this boy Valle is a good signing, but just remember we’ve had a Uruguayan international in Diego Laxalt and the Argentinian lad Bernabei, yet they didn’t manage to take Taylor’s place in the team. The reason for that is that Taylor is a pretty good footballer, not as good as some people would like but a lot better than some think.
He’s not a LB, more of an auxiliary midfielder filling in at LB when we defend.
Agree with regard to Greg Taylor – he has seen off a few challengers since coming in. The final day nonsense across the industry is insane and I would rather business done earlier and the window closed before the domestic seasons start (say end of July). With Trusty onboard at least we now have 4 left sided defenders which should give us some options.
Totally agree well put
My own opinion is that this transfer window, at the end of the day has been acceptable, and the last couple of days has put a smile on my face. It has been more relief than anything else though. Sure, there has been mistakes made with unnecessary delays and inflated prices being agreed, but the board, albeit probably reluctantly, did eventually step up to the plate with two record transfer fees being forked out. I don’t buy into the argument regarding the net spend difference, that is not that important other than it being a bonus for the club and that is not a bad thing. I would give the club 6/10 pass marks for this window, and yes it could have been a lot better, but it is over now and time to get on with the challenges ahead.
COYBIG
At the end of it all James, do you take up your European allocation , or not?
I would have liked Iwata to stay, as he offered good cover for Mcgregor, and a third striker would not have gone wrong.
Apart from that, I believe that they have done alot better than me, you, and most of our supporters would have believe possible last week, I would give them a B , but they should have been aiming for an A+ .
Just no pleasing some people is there ?
Its not a case of ‘pleasing people’, its about doing their job and backing the manager’s
plans for developing the team to deal with current and future demands on the Playing Staff.
It’s part of his role as a Coach to identify structural weaknesses in the side and plan for staff turnover. If the Board don’t support his plans then they are failing in their duty. It’s just the same as in any other organisation, you need to invest in people and plan for staff turnover.
The Board’s primary function should be to fund the Football Department to allow the Managers and Coaches to put the best team possible on the park. It’s the single most important duty the Board has. The end product, a successful side. No other ambition should take precedence to that. It’s what the paying ‘Customer’ expects.
If the Club wants to invest in new Capital infrastructure it should be funded by issuing new shares and allowing the investors to determine if there is a demand / support for the Boards plans. Football revenue should be solely focused on meeting the current Administration Costs of the Organisation and funding a Football Department. This is where Celtic and many other Clubs are at fault, the ‘Chicken and egg’ scenario with Celtic the Organisation threatening to subsume Celtic Fc.
Without the Football side of the Organisation there is no need for the Plc. Celtic Plc without Football cannot diversify or switch focus, the ‘’Customers’ would not accept it and the Investors would not support it.
All the background noise about having to stay solvent, not over extend ourselves is whitewashing. These issues are not the aims or objectives of Celtic. They are the Fiduciary duties of any Public Facing Organisation and any competent Administrator could carry out those duties. Where Celtic is at fault is that it, not so much can’t but will not, split the two separate sides of the Organisation into self managing and self regulating divisions. As we frequently say ‘the bean counters want to pick the team’.
A self sustaining Football Department is long overdue at Celtic. It would allow a modern approach to the development of the Footballing activities of the Club. It would allow the Manager and Coaches to submit a written plan for restructuring the Scouting and Youth development activities under the auspices of ‘Football People’. They would submit their plans for the short, middle and long term development of the playing side. The Manager and football staff would identify what infrastructure they require, Physical and Manpower. As in Sports Medicine Staff, Sports Analysts and Statisticians.
These plans would be passed to the Plc Board with the ‘Instruction’ not ‘request’ to cost the plan and then from the vast revenues that Celtic generate, to provide the resources over an agreed timescale.
Celtic Plc is NOT a financial institution. There is NO need for the Club to hold such large Cash Reserves. If the Board feel that there is such a need then they should disclose it to the Supporters or at the least to their Shareholders.
Our problems are basically the result of allowing the Plc to develop under the control one individual over a period of 20 years, blinded the by apparent Footballing and Financial success. As Football has changed, Society and the Business World has changed also over the same period. But Celtic Plc is still stuck in the pre Banking Crisis era of 2008 and the Post 2012 Scottish Footballing Landscape and it is chained to the tunnel vision of a Board of ‘Old, white men’ led by a former long term CEO and current Chairman. Their vision of Celtic Plc is intrinsically at odds with its ‘ Customers’ , the Supporters, the lifeblood of the Football Club.
Until the Board is changed, fresh blood admitted behind the closed doors of the Plc and the abandonment of ‘cronyism’ and the growth of the feudal, dynastic lineage, control structure at the head of the Plc remains unabated then the disconnect between the fans of ‘The Club’ and ‘ The Plc’’ will continue to grow.
With severe consequences for all.
Said these before, PL back in the building, total control and Ange could read the script, offski.
You do not need to be football minded to understand the needs of the team. How many years has PL been at the club. He knows what it’s about.
He has taken us for mugs.
This board must go, or just PL. DD sends out a statement. The rest leave or toe the line.
Great read. Agree with it all but how do we git rid of this board where the team comes second.
Well said sir. We could have had everything done a long time ago but as usual we wait until the last minute. The quicker we get the old regime out of the boardroom and replace them with forward thinkers the better
I am becoming more and more of the view that Celtic is being run like a cult, where no criticism of the leaders is tolerated, and anyone who dares to try is subject to vilification and abuse, particularly on cult propaganda sites like CQN.
This happens over there on a daily basis from people who are more followers than supporters.
Maybe perhaps, the 10m+surplus will come in handy in January, depending on how the team
are performing, but for now lets start with putting the scum hoards to the sword tomorrow
Hail Hail….
Frederick Howden
says:
August 31, 2024 at 12:06 pm
Just no pleasing some people is there ?
—————-
So you are happy that we didn’t sign a class winger to compete in champions league?
You are never a fan of the team.
The Celtic board will do what they think is best for the club we have very successful business men/women who know how a business should be run to be successful and make profit”if not we would not be in this position to spend the millions over the last few weeks.Fans and pundits this is a business and it’s in business to make profits because it could change if we spent everything we receive from the revenue the club gets every year
The board could’ve acted quicker and brought another player or two in, but largely I think Brendan got most of his wishes granted.
He wanted two midfielders, a left sided CB, a LB and a back-up striker which he said he’s resolved with Daizen Maeda. He also wanted Idah and Bernardo re-signed plus the two new goalkeepers.
He also said he’d prefer to sign 3 players for £18m than 6 “project players”. They’ve signed 5 outfield players for a total of £30m, averaging £6m each, which equates to or exceeds what he asked for. All the ins and outs have been as per Brendan’s wishes so compared to last season or any recent season outwith Ange’s time, I’ve got a feeling Brendan will be quite pleased and feel ready for a meaningful CL campaign.
If he can replicate his improvement of MOR and Kuhn with these new players then so much the better.
Is it not time we started an online petition of having no confidence in the board, calling for their removal, due to their continuing ineptitude running our club.
Taylor is a strong squad player at best.
His understudy is Ralston a Right back.
Our problem is that his contract is up next Summer and no sign
as yet of discussions on a new contract.l’m guessing here that with us signing
a new left sided Centre Half Scales will revert to Left Back his natural position.
Taylor then gets a new contract and him and Scales cover for each other, form,
injuries and suspensions.No need for Board to find an upgraded Left Back.
Penny pinchin as usual.
We signed a centre half, we signed a left back on loan to put a bit pressure on Greg Taylor, we upgraded Joe Hart wae a keeper who’s super comfy at playing out from the back. We signed a highly rated young keeper because Kasper is not getting any younger, we replaced O’Reilly with a record signing, we secured both loan players we had last year, Idah cost a lot of money, we signed one of the most promising Scottish midfielders in the league and we got shot of a bunch of dead wood. Granted, we went to the wire but I’m pretty happy overall.
It wasn’t as bad as I feared and it’s better than I thought…
But they’re not very good at poker ot perhaps they could have gotten them in earlier for better money…
Still they’re in and that’s all that counts –
Would have liked to have seen Shankland in as back up though !
I can’t help but think this was a forced or panic transfer window for Celtic. This was all left far too late and you can’t help but think Rodgers has told the board who were under pressure from the supporters anyway this Celtic team WON’T cut it in the Champions League. Celtic paid far too much for Adam Idah who is a journeyman striker and we had a simular player in Georgios Gakomakus was twice the striker and we let him go. Aberdeen sold Miovski for far less and he’s a better striker. The signing from Sheffield might help Carter-Vickers at the back because Scales won’t cut in the Champions League neither will Greg Taylor. Celtic have become a business first and a football club second. The board are not interested in what happens on the football park.