Celtic has less than a week of transfer time to fix some of its problems.

I am still recovering from Celtic’s defeat to LASK and, honestly, I still cannot come to terms with it. I have tried to process that performance, watched it, thought about it, argued with myself about it and asked the same question over and over again: how on earth did Celtic go from looking so powerful at Paradise to looking so completely lost when it mattered most?

I said in my previous article that the LASK defeat exposed Celtic. It exposed the weaknesses, the lack of depth and the players who simply are not ready for this level. Perhaps most importantly of all, it exposed the enormous gap between what Celtic say they want to achieve in Europe and what Celtic are actually doing to achieve it.

Now I am looking at the calendar, and Celtic have less than a week. The Scottish transfer window closes at 5pm on Thursday 3 September, which means the talking has to stop and the doing has to begin.

There is no more time for yammering away about improving the squad. Celtic have days to actually do something, because I don’t want another speech or another explanation about the difficulties of the transfer market. I don’t want to hear how complicated negotiations are, how difficult agents can be, how selling clubs ask for too much money or how Celtic are competing with English teams.

I know all of that. Celtic knew all of that before this summer started too, and the clock has not suddenly appeared on the wall. The club has had months, and now, after that humiliation against LASK, the excuses are becoming harder and harder for folks to swallow.

We care about Celtic far too much to sit here and pretend everything is fine. It isn’t. If Celtic genuinely want to compete properly, even at the second tier in European football, then this is the moment when the club has to show that ambition isn’t simply a word which sounds nice in press conferences and annual reports.

Some of what I saw against LASK frightened me. I am going to be brutally honest about that because some of those performances were simply nowhere near good enough for Celtic. Where did they come from? How can we stop them repeating?

Hatate looked, to my eyes, like a player who had already mentally left the building. Yet we’re basing whether or not we sign a new player for midfield on whether he stays or goes? That’s senseless, like so much of what we do.

McCowan was even worse. Ralston was a nightmare. Scales was another nightmare and Tounekti left me wondering what exactly I had just watched. These are the moments when I have to ask myself a very uncomfortable question: are these really the players with whom Celtic are planning to compete seriously in Europe?

Because if the answer is yes, then I am seriously worried.

I don’t expect Celtic to suddenly become Real Madrid, and I don’t expect us to sign eleven world-class footballers in the few days which remain.

But we should absolutely expect a Celtic squad going into the Europa League to contain players capable of handling European nights.

The fans want players with experience, personality and technical quality. We want players who don’t disappear when the pressure rises and who understand that wearing the Hoops is not simply putting on a green-and-white shirt. It is a responsibility, an honour and a bloody privilege. When you walk onto that pitch wearing Celtic colours, fans want to see players who understand what that means.

Celtic, if you want to get stronger, then get stronger.

This is where my instincts are screaming. Celtic need experienced, high-calibre players now, not another collection of hopeful projects and not another signing where we spend six months explaining why the player needs time to adapt.

We want footballers who can walk through that door and immediately raise the standard. We want competition for places, players who make the man beside them better and a squad where nobody strolls onto the team sheet simply because there is nobody else. Yes, that means difficult decisions.

For me, Celtic should seriously consider moving on from Hatate, McCowan, Tounekti, Scales and Ralston and replacing them with players of considerably higher calibre. I am not saying that because I enjoy criticising Celtic players. Quite the opposite.

I say it because I want Celtic to become stronger.

We want Celtic to have a squad capable of competing in Europe instead of merely participating in it. There is a massive difference between those two things, and LASK showed us that difference in the most painful way possible.

What frustrates me most is that Celtic did not need LASK to tell us improvements were necessary. We already knew.

We knew there were positions which needed strengthening. We knew we needed more quality and experience, and we knew European football would expose weaknesses which Scottish domestic football can sometimes allow us to hide.

Yet here we are, with less than a week remaining in the window and obvious holes still sitting in the squad. That is why I keep coming back to the same thought: Celtic, what is your plan? What is the plan now? Because if the answer is more delay and more dithering, then I am afraid that isn’t a plan at all.

A plan means identifying the weaknesses, finding the right players, negotiating aggressively and getting the deals done. A plan means deciding what Celtic need and then going out to get it. A plan means looking at that LASK performance and saying: never again.

And I know somebody will say, “Paulina, you can’t build a squad in less than a week.” Of course you can’t, and I am not asking Celtic to build an entirely new team in a few days. But this is why a lot of us – most of us – have been calling for this rebuild for months. We are down to the last week; that’s the reality. It should never have got to this stage.

I am asking them to finish the work they should already have been doing and there is still time to make meaningful changes.

There is still time to bring in quality, give Martin O’Neill players who can actually help him and show supporters that the LASK humiliation was not simply another embarrassing chapter which will be forgotten in the boardroom as soon as the domestic season rolls on.

Because I don’t want to forget it.

I don’t want Celtic to forget it either. I want that defeat to hurt and sting, and I want everybody inside Celtic Park to look at that performance and say: this is unacceptable, we are better than this and we must do better than this. That is how humiliation becomes motivation. That is how failure produces change.

So here I am, Celtic. I am still angry, still disappointed and still trying to understand how we managed to throw away such an enormous opportunity, but I am also looking forward because that is what supporters do.

We hurt, we moan, we scream and sometimes threaten to throw the television out of the window. Then we wake up the next morning and still love the club. That is Celtic. That is me.

I care too much to remain silent, so Celtic now have less than a week to show us the plan. Show us that European humiliation has actually taught you something and that you are serious about strengthening this squad.

Bring in players with quality, experience, personality and hunger.

Make Celtic stronger, more powerful, more competitive and more dangerous. If that means saying goodbye to players who have demonstrated that they cannot take Celtic to the level we need to reach, then so be it.

Because fans don’t want Celtic merely winning in Scotland. We want Celtic to walk into Europe without fear, and we want European opponents looking at the Hoops and thinking: “bloody hell, this is going to be difficult.”

We want Celtic players walking onto that pitch believing they belong there. We want hunger, courage, quality and character. We want players who would crawl across that pitch for Celtic and who understand the enormous privilege of wearing those famous green-and-white Hoops. Sometimes those things are more important that talent and skill … they are the glue that holds a team together when it finds itself on the ropes as we were the other night.

The clock is ticking now. The transfer window in Scotland closes on Thursday 3 September, and there is no excuse for anybody at Celtic not knowing precisely what has to be done between now and then.

No more talking, no more excuses and no more promises. Show us something. Show us that Celtic are getting stronger, that the people running this club have learned something from LASK and that they are serious about repairing the damage.

Because we are still hurting from that defeat, and we don’t want another European nightmare. We want a Celtic resurrection. My instincts are telling me that the next few days could tell us everything we need to know about where our beloved Celtic FC is really going. It better be somewhere better than this.

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