Celtic’s transfer business should be forward facing, not looking backwards.

One thing was glaringly obvious in the closing days of the winter transfer window: this club has very little imagination when it comes to signing players at the moment.

We all commented at the time that, while it certainly made sense to get Jota back for a lot less than we sold him for, and although bringing Kieran Tierney back on a free—if he’s fit—was a logical move, neither deal exactly screamed confidence in the scouting department.

Now we hear that Carl Starfelt was under consideration as a signing, and there are people expressing hope that we might yet go back and try to re-sign Kyogo Furuhashi for a nominal sum of £3.5 million—having only just sold him for £10 million. I can understand why some people might like the idea, but it wouldn’t exactly suggest we’ve improved at spotting emerging talent.

Signing either of those guys would be a step backwards. It’s obvious that Rodgers doesn’t trust the judgment of certain people at the club and wants to exercise his own. He wants to go after players he recognises and knows will bring something to the table. I have no problem with that. Where I do have a problem is in constantly going back and re-signing players we’ve already sold.

I don’t believe it will happen. I don’t believe we’ll go back for either player. It wasn’t that long ago that Kyogo was allegedly pushing for a move away. Taking him back would be an admission of defeat—both for him and for Celtic. Because surely, we’ve had enough time by now to identify his replacement. Signing that player ought to be task number one for the summer, and the moves should already be well underway.

Whatever is wrong with the scouting department, it won’t be fixed by re-signing former players. Whatever has gone wrong in our ability to identify talent, we certainly won’t progress by taking steps backwards. Kyogo was off form when we let him go. His head was clearly elsewhere. He wanted to move, and nothing suggests that anything in his reasoning has changed in any significant way.

The only argument for doing it is in terms of PR—how it would wind up our rivals and irritate some in the mainstream media. That once again, we’d have netted a major transfer fee and ended up with our own player back at the club, with a huge profit. But there’s no real footballing reason for it.

There’s no argument that it would make us a better team. In fact, in terms of Kyogo, we’ve already stumbled onto a better setup. Maeda looks head and shoulders above what Kyogo was producing in his final months at the club.

Starfelt is a different discussion. He’s a good defender, and I was disappointed to lose him just when it looked like he was coming onto a game.

We definitely need some backup in central defence.

Trusty and Carter-Vickers will be the first choices, and Scales will be the backup, but putting Nawrocki back into the side was a clear indication of things falling short. Nawrocki doesn’t have a future at the club and should be allowed to explore his options elsewhere. That would be good for him and for us.

We have a lot of work to do in the summer, and it’ll be even harder if key players leave. But I’d like to think we’ll show some imagination.

I’d like to think we’ll strengthen by bringing in new players, not old ones. Fans want to see new signings. They want to see fresh names. They want to watch players they haven’t seen before. They want to witness the emergence of new talent. That’s why all this reporting around former players is just lazy.

I trust our club to be more professional and imaginative than this. I trust that Paul Tisdale and Brendan Rodgers have worked together long enough now to do better than reaching back into the old well.

This team has to take strides forward, not backwards. I understood the signings of Jota and Tierney. These moves would be much harder to defend.