More bad news on the injury front for Celtic is another warning about squad depth.

Earlier in the week I speculated that perhaps this season is cursed. It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion when you look at the number of injuries Celtic have picked up.

The news last night that Auston Trusty limped off for the United States in stoppage time feels like just another sign that we’re not going to catch a break. It’s unclear how bad the injury is, but knowing our luck, it probably won’t be minor.

I try not to get downbeat about this kind of thing. I try not to drift into superstition.

It’s hard, though. It really is. I’ve rarely seen a campaign where the odds feel so heavily stacked against us.

It’s even more frustrating because we’ve stacked some of those odds ourselves. We’ve responded poorly to challenges on and off the pitch this season, and that alone would be bad enough. The run of bad luck surrounding it just amplifies everything.

Earlier, I took aim at a certain website pushing the idea that our signing policy is sound.

Look at where that has left us. We’re still playing Liam Scales at centre-half as if that’s an acceptable long-term solution. Alongside him, in massive matches, we’ve had a Brentford reserve. If it’s not those two, it’s Dane Murray. That is the policy, laid bare.

This is what’s being defended.

The board knew Cameron Carter-Vickers would miss the rest of the season.

What did they do in January? They signed Benjamin Arthur, a player who had never played competitive first-team football. No one can seriously argue that reflects a club taking its responsibilities seriously. It doesn’t.

That’s why we’re down to fragments. That’s why the squad looks stretched to breaking point. The people running the club have failed to build properly. They’ve failed to equip the manager adequately, and now all of that is coming home to roost in the most painful way possible.

When you leave a squad threadbare in key areas, you invite trouble. Injuries are unavoidable.

Bad breaks happen. You cannot control them. You can only prepare for them.

I’ve given the board some benefit of the doubt in respect of injuries.

No one could have predicted Carter-Vickers missing the whole season. No one could have known that Jota would return and then immediately suffer an injury ruling him out long-term. That’s not on the board or the manager.

The response to those setbacks is.

When it became clear Jota wasn’t going to feature meaningfully this season, we should have replaced him. When it became clear Carter-Vickers wouldn’t kick another ball, we had a responsibility to bring in an experienced, high-calibre centre-back. One, at minimum.

Arthur has done well enough in patches, but no one can argue that signing alone was sufficient. It was a gamble. A risk. And it was a risk taken with the league title.

We may yet pay a heavy price for that.

This is a threadbare squad. It hasn’t been properly equipped.

That’s why every time you see a notification about an injury—whether on international duty or in training—your heart jumps. We all know we don’t have the depth to absorb these blows. Every injury increases the pressure. Every absence raises the stakes.

Modern football demands more than ever.

Players are playing more games, at higher intensity, across longer seasons. You can see it across Europe. You can see it in England, where players look exhausted and injuries are piling up. Even the top sides are asking whether they’re equipped to cope.

That reality demands deeper squads. Stronger squads. Better-prepared squads.

There is more money in the game than ever before, especially for clubs competing in Europe. That money should help you build resilience. It should allow you to strengthen, to rotate, and to cope with exactly the kind of challenges we’re facing now.

We haven’t done that.

I’ve said all season that Hearts are riding a wave they won’t be able to sustain.

Next year, if they reach European group stages, they’ll feel the strain. Their squad cannot handle it.

Neither can ours.

The difference is that Hearts have an excuse. Their resources are limited. Ours are not.

We have tens of millions in the bank. We generate revenue at a level our domestic rivals cannot touch. Yet we still operate as if we’re a club scraping by, still trying to do everything on the cheap.

That approach should be over. It has to be over.

Competing on multiple fronts now requires real investment. It requires planning and depth. It requires foresight.

Instead, we’ve gone backwards.

At the most critical stage of the season—when every point matters, when every match carries weight—we’re discovering just how thin this squad really is. We’re discovering the cost of cutting corners. We’re discovering what happens when you take risks instead of making decisions.

The level of risk taken this season is off the scale. The club has taken those risks while sitting on a financial cushion most clubs could only dream of.

That’s the part that sticks in the throat.

Because this isn’t just bad luck. The injuries hurt, no question. They’ve made a difficult situation worse. But the real damage happened long before Auston Trusty limped off that pitch.

The real damage started in boardrooms, in transfer windows, in decisions the club chose not to take.

And if this season slips away from us, it won’t be because we were cursed.

It will be because we weren’t prepared.

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