KILMARNOCK, SCOTLAND - FEBRUARY 15: Celtic Chief Financial Officer Christopher McKay (L) and Chief Executive Officer Michael Nicholson during a William Hill Premiership match between Kilmarnock and Celtic at BBSP Stadium Rugby Park, on February 15, 2026, in Kilmarnock, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images)
This morning Paulina wrote a piece about the £40 million summer transfer window. The chances are good, very good in fact, that we will raise something close to that figure from sales. So it is not a stretch to say that it is an amount we should be looking to spend. There is a lot to do. There are a lot of players to replace. The size of the task is gargantuan. It is not a task that can be done on the cheap.
Like it or not, this is a summer where Celtic is going to have to get real, get serious and spend proper money.
It would not be the first time. Ange’s first summer window was an expensive one. It became even more expensive later when we paid £12 million for two of the players he first brought in on loan. At that point, the different parts of the club seemed to be functioning in sync. But Celtic is not a club that lets a good thing run smoothly for very long. We always seem to find something that works, try to fix it, and only make it less stable, less effective and less functional.
It blows my mind that we did not properly learn the lessons from the most successful transfer window in recent years and lock them in for good. When the manager had full control of the process and signed players who fit his system, the effects were obvious. We put a winning team on the park after a year in which we lost the title. At the same time, we added serious value to the squad, value the club has stripped down to the bone over the last few years. That was the Ange effect. That is what we got when we did things the manager’s way.
So of course, we did not keep doing it that way.
I have often wondered whether the problem was not that people feared failure, but that they feared success a little too much. If the manager takes the credit not just for the team on the park but for finding the players and building the side, then what credit do the others at the club have left to hoover up for themselves?
Once again, last night I heard talk about all the trophies Dermot Desmond has won. Let me be blunt. He has not won a single trophy. The idea that he somehow deserves credit for that haul insults the people who actually achieved it. That would be the managers and the players.
We do not even have a manager for next season yet, and that is just one of several things that show how badly we run the club right now. This cannot wait. We need to appoint someone quickly, and we have to start rebuilding this squad at once.
In many ways, this is like building any structure. You start with the foundations. Then you put up the frame. Only after that can you begin laying out the rooms, putting up the walls and laying the floor. It all has to be done piece by piece, one step at a time and in the right order.
Finding the manager is step one in that order.
If you do not have him in place first, then you are doing everything out of sync. You are signing players without knowing the system he wants to play. You are making changes to the role itself which he may not even be willing to accept. If the club wants to appoint a head of football operations and put the managerial hunt in his hands, fine, that is at least a coherent idea. But before a single player is scouted and signed, the manager must come first.
We have already seen what happens when amateurs assemble a squad for him.
That mistake has haunted us. Yet it still looks as though this board might head down exactly the same road again. We do not know that for certain, but at a moment like this, with no manager in the room, I would like to think we could dismiss any transfer story out of hand. The trouble is that too many of those stories are circulating, and too many focus on deals the club now appears to be trying to do here in Scotland.
The idea that we are trying to sign Chaiwa from Hibs appals me. The idea that we are looking at Levitt appals me too. I would be astonished if those stories were true. I would be disgusted if they were true, because if they are, then we are not just trying to rebuild without a manager, we are trying to do it on the cheap as well.
If you are a Celtic supporter and the club asks you to buy a season ticket, what exactly are they selling you?
You are perfectly entitled to keep your money in your pocket.
I have feared this summer for a long time. We already got a preview of what it could look like with the appointment of Wilfried Nancy. There are people on that board who have spent years itching for this moment, the moment when they can bring in their project manager and hand him a bunch of cheap project players. They are so arrogant and so convinced of their own genius that they think they can rebuild the football department in a way that delivers more with less.
That flies in the face of everything happening across football. It flies in the face of longer seasons, tougher schedules and the demands now placed on players. In that sense, it is absolute madness.
I have been convinced for a long time that this is their little experiment. They they have been dying to try it. This season should have beaten that idea out of them. It should have dissuaded them completely. It has not. Some of them still want to see it in action.
I cannot put it more bluntly than this.
If we approach this summer in a serious, professional and coherent way, if we bring in the right person and support that person properly, and if we are willing to fund him to the fullest extent we can, then next season will be worth watching. It could be a genuine turning point.
But if we approach this summer in an incoherent, haphazard way, buying projects, bringing in players on the cheap, raiding the waifs and strays of the SPFL and quite possibly appointing the Motherwell manager, then we are in for a long, hard campaign next year and the rudest awakening in our history.
If these people decide to go down that road, it ends nowhere but disaster.
And if that happens, the chaos of this season will seem like a picnic compared to the next one.
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How quickly and conveniently you’ve managed to forget you were a major cheerleader for Nancy.
Revisionism at its finest.
That’s completely untrue. He gave Nancy a chance but as soon as it became obvious he was mince he wrote about it. Check the archives it’s all there.
James thought Nancy was a good choice and wanted him in straight away before the cup final. It became obvious to everyone it was unlikely to work very quickly, but how long do you give a manager. Similar to Ange at Forest.
To be fair I thought Nancy would be good too, I still think Nancy will come good, but at Celtic, losing anything domestically is a disaster as The past few managers have found out. There is no time to bed in anywhere anymore. Man. U are the only club who seem to give managers a decent chance…maybe learnt that from the Fergie early years.
Food for thought James, but not sure I follow your logic. You are saying DD and co. deserve no credit for the invincibles and 9 in row but surely they hired the folk who delivered all the trophies. Neil Lennon also delivered 10 of the trophies including 2 trebles but not much chance of him getting credit either. So what you mean is Rodgers and his players should get credit and nobody else I guess?
I dont credit the board with anything or the managers or the players to be honest. All the teams that won everything were total failures in europe often getting annihilated. The credit for all the trophies can be given to the worst opposition in the history of Scotland.
Can’t see much changing tbh. If we sell Maeda Engels and Hatate and get £40m I would be very surprised but let’s be honest £40m buys fuck all. Nottingham Forest were offering £45m for a single player in the last window and they are relegation candidates. Tbf they are in the quarters of a European competition which we haven’t been for almost quarter of a century.
All on DDs watch….I agree no credit to DD or the board but none to the manager or players either. Its a fucking one horse race ffs!!!
Comparing us to Forest or any EPL team is irrelevant, £40m buys plenty for Celtic and almost every other team in Europe outside of the English league(who overpay for average players) and maybe 10 other clubs.
You are right though in saying you can’t blame the board for failure without admitting they played a part in the success. The protests escalated quickly to sack the board when at first it was about trying to put right failures we repeatedly make. Things are changing, if we get this window right and make decisions that don’t mean we finish third with a mountain of cash, then I don’t care who’s hiding behind the curtain. I don’t see Desmond leaving no matter what but I am encouraged that things are changing. I don’t have a lot of confidence we’ll get it right mind you because I think, serious clubs, have already done a lot of work on how the summer will go whereas we’ll wait until a new manager is in and hope things work out at the last minute.
Forest are in the semis now.
Villa v Forest in the semis and whoever wins that will be favourites for the trophy. That is fantasy land for us and let’s remember these 2 teams have won 3 European Cups between them so real european pedigree there, with no easy access to the competition like we have.
Are we the only club that buys players and gives them.to the manager and says get on with it. Its a nonsense idea and doesn’t work
I dont mind what players we get in as long as we get a good manager first znd then he decided what system he wants and what players will fit that system. Thats how a team is built.
I haven’t seen many players from other spfl clubs this season who I feel are that good other than the kiwi lad , Just , from Motherwell, every time I’ve seen him I thiught he could do a job for us. I also like killian Philips from St Mirren
This idea of completely ignoring other SPFL players is ludicrous as we have signed some cracking players from other Scottish teams so dont dismiss that idea
But a club like Celtic with the fanatical support we have world wide should be able to produce our own players and it is a scandal that we do not.
Mr Mojorisin @ 6.39pm…
It ain’t no one horse fuckin race this season for sure !
First and foremost we need to decide whether or not we want a director of football. We then need to agree their mandate – do they set the long term vision of how we play, how we develop players etc or are they a glorified “gofer” for the manager?
James – let’s forget Nancy, you were a big supporter of Tisdale having done “your due diligence”. You never fully explained the role you expected him to play via-a-vis Rodgers – master or slave?
There’s a lot to do in the summer – right now we have a league and cup to win and we need to get 100% behind the team, one game at a time. HH
If we do have a proper budget but have lost Maeda, Nygren, Engels and probably Hatate, along with all the loan guys, then we obviously need quality reinforcements. To look at the positives, we have good experienced pros so we should focus on signing young players and a couple of reliable strikers no matter what age. I didn’t want to start talking about this until the season is done but the huns had Naderi get injured so give Miovski more game time. Miovski would’ve definitely joined us if we’d gone for him and he would be playing every week if we’d signed him, the fact we didn’t sign him or anyone is likely going to cost us. The summer rebuild is massive and one we’re probably completely unprepared for.
Good post Brattbakk. I also wondered why Brendan didn’t sign Miovski, but the fact that he did not hit it off at first with Sevco, and there is still not a lot of reasons to think that he actually will.
I still think that Brendan knew exactly what he was doing when he did not sign Miovski.
I’m not sure that speculation and rumours amount to a 40M incoming transfer budget, for who the hell is going to spend that kind of money on the bang ordinary players we assume will command those fees? We will be lucky if we get the money back that we paid for Engels, for he has been nothing but a big let down, Nygren for all he has been a mainstay in our efforts this season and has incredible stats as a result, for me there is still something missing in his locker and again he is not worth the expected fees quoted for him. Maeda and Hatate are busted flushes as ar as I am concerned and their worth has got to be affected by their present form….. or lack of it, I have no idea what we might realise from all four of their sales, but 40M, gie’s a break. We are beginning to sound like the Huns who exaggerate the worth of every player on their books.
We knocked back £25m for Engels in January and Nygren has a lot of interest, plus Daizen and Hatate… Regardless of what we get we won’t spend it anyway and whether you rate these guys or not, they get a lot of game time and will need to be replaced with new important players which we probably haven’t started planning for.
Brattbakk, I know well what we were offered for Engels and we should have bit the hands off Forest at the time, for I doubt that we will get that chance again. It might actually be a good thing that he has been injured for a while for that would have given any potential buyers time to re-assess his talents and I don’t think that would have turned out very well from our point of view. I of course want Celtic to get the maximum for any sellable assets that we may have, but a bit of realism has to be applied as well.
Oh, and although I hate to see any of our players injured, I don’t really think Engels was missed. he is just another one of a bunch of our very ordinary, lackadaisical midfielders.