Shin Yamada is the poster boy for the regression of this Celtic side.

There are a few things that sum up the disgrace of where Celtic find themselves today, but none more so than the situation with Shin Yamada. A player signed for £1.5 million, who Brendan Rodgers was effectively told would replace a player we sold for £10 million.

Had that been the long and short of it, you might perhaps have given the board some shred of the benefit of the doubt. But the player we were replacing was Kyogo, and although Yamada was his countryman, he did not have anywhere near the experience or the goal-scoring prowess. It was a shocking signing.

If you want to understand just how far standards have slipped at Celtic, you do not need to look at the league table, the performances, or even the boardroom decisions in isolation. You can see it clearly in the profile of the players we have moved from and the ones we have tried to replace them with, and Yamada is the poster boy for it.

On the other side of that comparison, you have Kyogo Furuhashi and Adam Idah. Whatever you thought of the Irishman, he arrived here with a weight on his back and immediately got busy proving that he could carry it.

Big goals, big games. A performance against Aston Villa in Europe which was up there with the best I have seen from a Celtic forward, and which cemented my view that we had a very good player on our hands.

Kyogo was not just a good striker. He was one of the most effective forwards Celtic have had in years. His movement was elite, his finishing clinical, and his understanding of space made him the focal point of everything we did well in attack.

He delivered goals, but more than that, it was the way he played the game that told you we were dealing with a top player.

Idah, although a different type of player, also contributed in a meaningful way. He offered physical presence, a different dimension, and chipped in with contributions so important that there might not even be a five-in-a-row discussion happening without them. He was not Kyogo, but he did a job, and at this level, doing a job matters.

Between them, you had output and reliability. You had players who could win matches. That is the baseline. That is the standard. Now look at what Brendan Rodgers was asked to accept as a replacement.

Shin Yamada arrived for a modest fee and never got going. Eleven appearances. One start. Zero goals. Frozen out to the point of playing B team football against East Kilbride. Then shipped out on loan to a struggling side in Germany’s second tier.

Even there, it has unravelled. Five appearances. No goals. Hooked at half-time in his only start. Dropped from the squad entirely at a team sitting bottom of the league. A club in crisis deciding that he cannot help them. Let that sink in.

A striker who could not get into a Celtic side lacking firepower is now unable to get into the team at the bottom of the 2. Bundesliga. That is not bad luck. That is not a player needing time. Shin Yamada is a complete failure of recruitment.

This is where Rodgers was right to feel insulted, and where we are correct to feel a growing sense of despair about the likely direction of this club. Because it is not just that Yamada has not worked out. Every club signs players who fail. That happens. That is part of football. The issue is that this is the level we are now shopping at.

This is the level we are being asked to accept going forward, because this is the so-called system the board has defended time and time again in front of the fans. That is the problem, no matter what certain revisionist Celtic sites might think.

You cannot go from two proven strikers who deliver goals in bulk to someone who cannot score in Germany’s second division and pretend that is anything other than a downgrade. You cannot sell that as strategy or spin that as development.

It is regression, plain and simple.

What makes it worse is that it fits a pattern.

This is not a one-off mistake but part of a broader recruitment approach that prioritises low-cost gambles over proven quality.

Players brought in on the basis that they might develop, might improve, might become something, rather than players who already are something. The problem is that football operates on short timelines. At a club like Celtic, if you are not good enough in the here and now, you will not be playing football in the here and now.

At Celtic, you are expected to win.

The kind of gaps we are seeing now, where a team that once relied on clinical forwards now looks blunt, predictable, and short of ideas in the final third, are not a coincidence. That is the consequence of decisions like this.

There is also a deeper issue here, and it goes beyond Yamada.

It speaks to ambition. Or rather, the lack of it.

Because when a club of Celtic’s size and resources replaces proven performers with speculative signings at this level, it sends a message. Not just to supporters, but to players, to agents, to everyone watching. The message is that standards are slipping. That excellence is optional. That “good enough” will do.

That is a dangerous place to be.

I go back often in my mind to the night in Munich.

It feels like an eternity ago, but it is barely 14 or 15 months past. On that night, every player in that Celtic squad knew they had reached as far as this team was going to go. If that team looked like it regressed afterwards, it is because, in the run-up to that game, we had already shown our level of ambition as a club.

We sold Kyogo and did not replace him.

That sent a very clear signal. Every player picked up on it. You could see it. Some of them have looked almost dejected ever since.

It is no coincidence that players spoke to Rodgers after that game about wanting to leave. They had seen the ceiling. They had seen how far this club was willing to go, and no further.

The board had written that game off as of no consequence. We know that because they did nothing to make it more likely that we would win it.

You can dress it up however you like. You can talk about development, potential, resale value, or long-term planning. But at some point, you have to look at the reality in front of you. We went from Kyogo and Idah to this.

That is not just a mistake.

It is a statement.

One that tells you exactly where this club is right now, and why this summer looks set to be such a struggle.

It is why many of us have long feared what is coming next.

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