Celtic’s squad calls on the same players too often. That won’t sustain another campaign.

Yesterday Paulina wrote an excellent piece about Celtic’s reliance on veteran players. I followed that up last night with a piece about Dane Murray and the club’s lack of succession planning.

But when you look at the team that finished the game at Ibrox, and the team likely to start tonight, something becomes painfully clear about the complete shambles of our signing policy over the last couple of years.

Martin O’Neill was not just relying on players who had been through these battles before. He was relying on the same nucleus of players who carried the club through the final two Brendan Rodgers titles. In short, the core of this side is largely the same group Rodgers inherited.

There has been very little meaningful change.

These are the players the manager trusts because they are the players who have already proven they can deliver under pressure. They are the players he can count on. But the fact he must rely on them again, years later, says everything about the board’s failure to properly rebuild the squad.

Too many of these players have been leaned on for far too long.

In truth, we are fortunate that Ange Postecoglou laid such strong foundations when he rebuilt the side. We are fortunate that he left behind a football identity and a group of players capable of carrying it forward. We are fortunate too that Rodgers added one or two players he genuinely trusts.

Without those foundations, where would we be?

What we are seeing now is the long-term consequence of failed transfer window after failed transfer window. The squad simply has not evolved enough since Ange left. That is why we are still turning to James Forrest to come off the bench and rescue games.

That should not be happening.

The question now is whether this group can carry us to the end of the season. Maybe they can. We will soon find out. But one thing is certain.

This squad will not get us through another campaign in its current form.

The work required this summer is extensive. Celtic cannot keep returning to the same well, hoping the same players will deliver one more time. Too many opportunities have been squandered. Too many windows have been lost.

This is not about settling for academy players either. As I said in the Dane Murray piece, I am not arguing that Murray should become our first-choice centre-half, nor that Stephen Welsh should return and walk into the team.

Celtic’s manager should always have the very best players available to him.

What we cannot keep doing is pretending that certain players represent the ceiling of our ambition.

For too long we have convinced ourselves that Liam Scales is the best we can do in central defence. We convinced ourselves that Greg Taylor was the best we could do at left-back for long enough. For too long we have watched Yang out wide and told ourselves that this is good enough. It is not.

The danger of settling for those levels is that it quietly stops the team from improving. When you accept mediocrity in one position, it weakens the entire structure.

Our transfer strategy rests on the idea that certain players will not come to Scotland, or that Celtic should not pay what those players are worth even if they would. That thinking has produced a rotten failure that everyone can see.

Even with six loan signings in this squad, glaring holes remain.

We still lack a proper right sided attacking midfielder. We still lack a genuine 20–30 goal striker. Even with the loans, the job is not half finished. The squad looks patched together, the transfer strategy feels rushed, and the decisions increasingly look like panic.

The striker situation is a perfect example.

The board had options in both the summer and the January window. They balked at the price. But how do they think this ends? The price will always be high when your need is obvious. It will be even higher when every club knows Celtic are sitting on a huge cash reserve.

And it gets worse if we sell players like Engels, Hatate or Maeda before bringing replacements in, which is exactly what tends to happen.

The reality is that this squad probably does need to be ripped apart in the summer. A lot of players will have to go. The club will need a rebuild, and it will cost serious money.

Sooner or later the board will have to accept market value. Not the imaginary valuation their internal model at Celtic Park produces, but the real market price.

Anyone who has studied economics for even a few minutes understands this: high demand plus limited supply drives prices up. Walk into the market cash rich and visibly desperate for a position and other clubs squeeze you.

That is simply how markets work.

Martin’s reliance on familiar faces is a problem, but it is also unavoidable. The patchwork nature of the squad is another problem. He cannot solve either issue right now. They are simply the reality he has inherited.

It is no coincidence that both Rodgers and O’Neill have repeatedly returned to the same core group of players.

They are the only ones capable of carrying the weight.

Whether they have enough left to drag this team over the line this season remains to be seen. But one thing is beyond debate.

Next season Celtic need an entirely new set of options. Those options must be better than the ones the manager has had to work with this year.

Whoever sits in that boardroom this summer faces an enormous task.

They had better be ready for it.