Celtic, and our rivals, are still cleaning up the mess from 18 months ago. But we can afford it.

Last night, we recorded the latest podcast episode, which we’ve called Sack the Board. It’s a cheeky nod to the shenanigans going on across the city—not, I hasten to add, a dig at our own board of directors, who are currently riding the crest of a wave thanks to Brendan Rodgers and this outstanding team. Sure, Celtic still has some issues to iron out, but none of them are causing major headaches right now.

That said, Joe, Eric, and I did have one tiny gripe to discuss. Brendan is still dealing with the fallout from the summer before last. Not this past summer—although it wasn’t perfect either—but the one prior. He inherited a squad bloated with players he didn’t sign, didn’t need, and couldn’t use. The club is still paying the price for that.

Thankfully, it’s a price we can afford. When you think about it, that’s incredible. That transfer window could—and should—have been an expensive disaster. None of the signings from that summer have been success stories.

The fact we’re moving on almost every player from that window without any of them making a major first-team impact is remarkable. What’s even more remarkable is how little damage that disastrous window has done to the club overall.

This is where I find it hard to criticise the people running Celtic too much, in spite of Rodgers still dealing with the fallout more than a year on.

For starters, we ended that window with a surplus. We actually made money because we spent less than we brought in from player sales. That’s astonishing and stands in stark contrast to the club across town, which is still reeling from its own mess from that same window—a mess that cost them a fortune.

Few things illustrate the gulf between the two clubs better than this. By any measure, our transfer dealings that summer were a shambles. They infuriated the manager and held us back, at least until January, when Brendan was able to make two game-changing signings. Only then did we start playing the kind of football we wanted to see.

When you look back on it, I don’t think Celtic has ever had a worse transfer window, at least not in the modern era. We signed eight players. How many of them were successful? Not one.

Nothing about that window makes sense. Signing three wingers was madness. Signing three players eligible for the Asian Cup—when we already knew it was a potential issue—was lunacy. And Brendan’s comments about taking what he was given to work with were soul-crushing. Listening to him say that, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought, “We’re in real trouble here.”

But what a credit it is to Brendan Rodgers and those players that he moulded into a title-winning team. What a credit to him that he managed to put aside all those misfit signings, none of whom he could get a tune out of, and go with Ange’s squad—a weakened version of it at that. It’s not unfair to suggest that transfer window could have cost us the league and put us in a very bad place.

Yet, amazingly, it became clear early in the season that the signings across the city were even worse. Unlike us, they didn’t have a major transfer sale to offset the costs, and they’re still dealing with the consequences.

Every penny they spent over there was similarly squandered. The difference is, we could afford that spending and they couldn’t.

While we’ve managed to move some players on loan and get them off the wage bill—although we haven’t recouped a penny of the transfer fees—they’re stuck with theirs. And despite it all, we’ve come through relatively unscathed.

Look at where Celtic is right now. That awful transfer window hasn’t hurt us at all. Sure, wasting that kind of money isn’t great. It’s not a strategy anyone would recommend. But when you come out of that transfer window posting a profit, finish the season as league and cup winners, and secure a record-breaking Champions League payday for the following campaign, the sting is lessened considerably.

It must be galling for their fans and their club to see that, even at a moment when we made one of our worst series of decisions in years, their own decision-making was worse. This is why I keep telling people to reject the idea that Celtic is in any way working to strengthen them.

There’s literally nothing we can do to stop them shooting themselves in the foot. They are capable of levels of self-sabotage we can’t control.

That summer plunged their club into its current crisis. They spent far too much and got far too little in return. We, on the other hand, spent what we could afford. Even if we write off the costs of every single player purchased that summer, it won’t be a disaster. We won’t even feel it five years from now. But they’ll be living with the consequences of their mistakes for a long time to come.

Photo by Ross MacDonald/SNS Group via Getty Images

Last night we released our latest podcast episode. In light of events across town we called it Sack The Board! Please check it out and share it if you enjoy it! Help us grow and get even better!