Celtic has started to move players out. Time to start bringing them in.

The transfer doors at Celtic have already opened.

For all the noise around Martin O’Neill staying, for all the relief at the club swerving away from the Robbie Keane cliff edge, for all the arguments about structure, strategy and who should or should not still be sitting in offices at Celtic Park, the squad rebuild has already begun. Not theoretically. Not eventually. Now.

Stephen Welsh is gone, his contract torn up by mutual agreement after years at the club. Kasper Schmeichel has retired after a shoulder injury finally ended his playing career. Hayato Inamura is reportedly heading back to FC Tokyo on a permanent basis after barely getting a kick in Glasgow. Luis Palma has already left for Lech Poznan in a permanent deal worth around £3.5 million to £4 million, depending on which version of the reports you read. Reo Hatate has now reportedly told the club he wants to leave this summer.

That is before we even get into the loanees, the fringe players, the players whose contracts are up, and the decisions still to be made on names like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Kelechi Iheanacho.

So let us not pretend this summer is waiting to begin.

It has begun. The clear-out is underway. The only question now is whether Celtic are going to move with the same urgency in the other direction.

Because departures alone are not strategy. Getting players out the door is the easy half of a rebuild. It reduces wages. It clears space. It trims the squad. It may bring in some money. But it does not win you a Champions League qualifier. It does not replace quality. It does not give Martin O’Neill the tools he needs.

That is the bit Celtic must now confront, quickly.

Palma’s exit matters because it proves there is already money moving. This is not a summer where Celtic can sit there pretending everything has to wait until later. Lech Poznan have made his move permanent, and while some reports put the fee around £3.5 million to £4 million rather than the £4.5 million figure doing the rounds, the exact number is not the central point. The central point is that the club has already banked a meaningful sum for a player who was not going to be central to next season.

The first money is banked. It’s a transfer fee and a wage saving. The squad spaces are being cleared out one at a time. So where is the movement in?

This is where Celtic have to break the habit of a lifetime. We all know the pattern. Players leave early. The holes are obvious. The support points them out. The manager talks carefully. The board says nothing.

Then we drift into August with people telling us the market is difficult, that value emerges late, that we have to be patient, that deals take time, that nobody should panic.

We have heard it all before. We are not interested in excuses and we won’t tolerate them. Not this summer. Not with a Champions League qualifier sitting there like a loaded gun on the table. Not with O’Neill having already rescued the club once. Not with the board having spent months insisting it was listening. Not with the support already exhausted by the silence, the drift and the sheer amateurism of the managerial process.

This time, the hard work has to start immediately.

If Hatate is going, then the midfield requires serious attention. Not some late-window punt. A proper midfielder. A player who can handle the ball, handle Celtic Park, handle pressure and walk into meaningful football in early August. He won’t be the only one who departs in that area. We’ll lose Engels. I think Barnardo is done as well and that’s going to leave us very short in an area where I think we already needed reinforcements.

If Schmeichel is gone, then the goalkeeper situation has to be settled early. There is no point pretending that is a minor issue. A Champions League qualifier is no place to be bedding in uncertainty.

If Welsh and Inamura are both gone, then the defensive depth has shifted. Neither was going to be central. Neither departure changes the first-choice team. But rebuilds are not only about the best eleven. They are about the full squad, the bench, the cover, the standards in training and the options when injuries arrive.

Celtic have spent too many years confusing numbers with depth.

Depth is not having a pile of players. Depth is having players the manager trusts. That is what we need now.

O’Neill cannot be expected to work with those he does not really want, does not really rate and cannot really use. That was one of the great failures of the last era. Celtic bought players who did not fit the manager, then wondered why the manager did not use them. They filled the building with bodies and called it planning.

It was not planning. It was clutter.

This summer has to be different. If players are leaving, the replacements must be targeted, early and serious. The manager must know who is coming. The recruitment department must know what he needs. The board must know that the old excuses will not survive contact with reality.

Because this rebuild is already bigger than some people want to admit.

Reo Hatate alone would be a major departure. Whatever his final months looked like, he has been a superb Celtic player over four and a half years. He helped define the Ange era. He brought imagination and risk to the midfield. He won trophies. He gave us moments. If he leaves, that is not just another squad player gone. That is a piece of the team’s creative identity walking out the door.

Palma was peripheral, but he still produced goals and assists in his first season and a lot of us wondered if he might return after his loan. Schmeichel was not here long, but he was an experienced goalkeeper who helped us through a difficult campaign. Welsh was one of our own, a squad player who knew the club. Inamura may be remembered as another odd club signing, but his exit still underlines the churn. Add the loanees and fringe players to that, and you are no longer talking about trimming around the edges.

You are talking about a proper reshaping.

Celtic is not poor. Celtic is not skint. Celtic is not some helpless provincial club waiting for the couch cushions to cough up enough loose change. We’ve already brought in the first money of the window and this is before a major sale. We’ve got serious cash sitting in the bank. It is ludicrous to think that we cannot do this rebuild; we can.

This club has cash. This club has assets. This club has European revenue at stake. This club has already brought in money from exits and will almost certainly bring in more. So, the budget exists. There are no excuses here.

The idea that we have to wait until every departure is complete before we start moving on arrivals is nonsense. That is how you end up chasing shadows. That is how you end up paying premiums late in the window.

That is how you end up with a manager standing there in August trying to qualify for Europe with one hand tied behind his back. A serious club works both doors at once.

It gets players out. It gets players in. It does not wait until the house is empty before buying furniture. And it certainly does not wait until the night before guests arrive before deciding whether it needs beds.

Martin O’Neill has done the rescue job. Now he needs the tools for the rebuild. I said that already, and this is where it becomes real.

The manager has to be backed immediately, because the rebuild is no longer an abstract summer talking point. It is happening in front of us.

The exits are telling us that. The reports around Hatate are telling us that. The Palma money is telling us that. The contract decisions still to come are telling us that.

Everything is moving but only in one direction. The club has to move faster in the other, quite possibly faster than it has in quite some time.

Because if Celtic handle this correctly, the clear-out can be healthy. It can freshen the squad. It can create room for better players. It can give O’Neill a leaner, stronger group. It can allow us to replace drift with purpose.

But if Celtic handle it the usual way, then this becomes another self-inflicted wound. Players leave, holes open, the qualifier arrives, excuses follow, and everyone in the boardroom acts shocked that the supporters are furious.

No. Not again. Celtic have to prove that the rebuild is not just another word they throw around when they want supporters to believe something is happening.

Start spending. Start moving.

Start acting like a club that knows the season has already begun.

Because in a very real way, it has.

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