Celtic fans should not fear a summer rebuild. Perhaps it’s time for one.

There’s a natural fear among a lot of Celtic supporters that this summer will bring a radical downsizing of the football club.

It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if this was the year that saw three or four players leave instead of just one or two. Fans always worry about this kind of thing, and not without good reason, because a major transformation of the team is not something any of us want to see.

But radical transformation of a winning team is not only normal—it’s how winning teams stay winning. When you think about the evolutions of the Celtic side over the last couple of years, each one seems to be slightly better than the last.

If the sale of one key player can fund a squad rebuild, imagine what could happen if we had the cash from losing three players in one window.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a scenario I’m hoping for.

I want us to retain the strength of this squad. I don’t want to see us sell a single player, let alone multiple players. But some of this may be out of our control—if a number of players want to leave and their agents start making noise about it, then it becomes an issue we have to deal with. This is still the Scottish Premiership, after all. It’s a tough league in which to retain your best talent.

We also need to think about what a squad actually requires. I’ve heard a lot of talk about how the board let the manager down because our bench was so threadbare going into the game against the Ibrox club. I actually disagree with those blaming the board for that. We are short in a couple of positions, but let’s not forget something that was being discussed not too long ago.

If you had to name your best 11 Celtic players, who would they be? My own take is that it would be Schmeichel in goal, AJ, Trusty, Carter-Vickers, and Schlopp in defence, McGregor, Hatate, and Engels in midfield, with Jota on the left and Nicholas Kuhn on the right with Daizen through the middle.

But you could also name a completely different starting XI based on players currently at the club—Sinisalo in goal, Ralston, Scales, Nawrocki, and Taylor in defence, a midfield of Bernardo, McCowan, and either Quan or Holm (if they ever return), with Yang and Forrest on the wings and Adam Idah as the central striker.

Right there is a squad of 22 players. We already know Taylor is likely to leave, with Kieran Tierney expected to replace him. We suspect there will be another striker brought in as well. That puts us in a position where we can field two different starting line-ups depending on circumstances and fitness.

So where do we go from here?

The aim should be to have a 25-man squad—that’s the standard in most of Europe’s top leagues, not including academy players. We’re not far off that now. If we sell two players this summer and bring in five or six, we’ll be at that point, provided the signings are of the right quality.

We will need at least one left-back. I’d sign Jeffrey Schlopp as cover for Tierney. We also need at least one more midfielder to ensure we have cover in every position. Ideally, that would be a midfield ball-winner. We all broadly agree that we need more depth up front and at least one more wide player. I still think we need another centre-back.

And we can’t ignore the fact that a couple more of these signings will need to be Scottish-based players. That’s why Lennon Miller’s name keeps coming up, and why McCowan was such a good signing. We’ll need a couple more homegrown players to meet the squad requirements and keep the team balanced.

The summer is going to be a nightmare, with endless rumours about key players leaving. That’s just our reality now.

But this won’t be the first time we’ve faced a major rebuild.

Every summer we’ve done one, we look at the scale of the job and wonder how we’re going to pull it off, yet we always do. The foundation is already in place—good players on long-term deals. Whether two or three players leave, that foundation remains.

Beyond that, it comes down to trust—trust in the manager and in the scouting department. We certainly trust the manager.

The real question is whether the manager trusts the scouting. If that’s resolved, we should have no fears about what a summer rebuild might look like or what it might achieve.

Ultimately, this rebuild has to be at the right level to keep the manager happy, ideally convincing him to sign a new deal.

By the time the summer is over and he knows exactly what he has to work with, the bulk of the team should be locked in place for the next three seasons.

If he gets that—if he gets the guarantee of stability and the chance to add more quality—then this evolution of Celtic could be the best one yet.

The latest Trinity Tims podcast is out now.