Barring something sudden and completely unforeseen, Celtic are going into tomorrow night’s game without having strengthened the midfield.
And I cannot tell you how disappointed I am by that.
To me, it is nonsense. As I have said before, the board has once again failed in its most fundamental duty at this stage of the season, which is to prepare this team for these ties as well as it possibly can.
I know they are getting a lot of credit in various places for the business that has been done. In my view, they only deserve it up to a point.
There were signings made this summer which could have been completed weeks before they eventually were. I was very happy with the arrival of Kasper Høgh, delighted with Haissem Hassan and very pleased with Mika Baur. I think all three could become top players for Celtic. But the fact that two of them arrived so late that they barely got cameo appearances against Dundee United, and certainly have not had anything like the proper preparation time with their new teammates that you would want before a tie of this magnitude, means those deals were completed too late.
That matters. If these players themselves had not spoken about Celtic’s interest going back months, perhaps we could shrug and say the opportunities only presented themselves late in the window.
But they did speak about it. Martin O’Neill spoke about it.
The interest was there. From January at least. Yet Celtic did not press the final button and get these deals over the line until almost the Champions League registration deadline itself.
That is particularly irritating in the case of Baur, where we know the deal could apparently have been done weeks earlier but was allowed to drag over a relatively small difference in valuation. We were reportedly haggling over roughly £300,000.
I am willing to bet that by the time the deal was finally concluded Celtic ended up paying at least as much extra one way or another anyway.
And for what? To waste precious weeks.
This club has been warned repeatedly that new players need time to integrate with their teammates. They need training sessions. They need games. They need to learn what the manager wants and understand the movements of the players around them.
They need to arrive early enough that their fitness levels are moving on roughly the same curve as everybody else’s.
The people running Celtic do not seem capable of absorbing that lesson. Despite repeated warnings and repeated examples of how damaging late recruitment can be, they continue to behave as though merely having the player inside the building by the registration deadline is somehow the same thing as properly preparing him to play.
And then there is the sale of Arne Engels.
That remains a piece of absolute nonsense to me, and one we may come bitterly to regret because of the imbalance it has created in midfield immediately before these fixtures.
We may yet be surprised. At the time I am writing this there are still roughly twelve hours remaining. A deal could suddenly happen. Somebody could be registered at the last minute. But that is exactly what it would be: a last-minute signing.
Even if Celtic complete a midfield deal today, that player will have had virtually no time with his teammates before tomorrow night.
He will have had no meaningful opportunity to absorb Martin O’Neill’s tactical plan or build any understanding with the people alongside him. And because we cancelled the St Johnstone fixture at the weekend, tonight and next week become the first and second opportunities for some of these new players to get proper competitive minutes.
I genuinely wonder whether Martin would have been quite so relaxed about losing that fixture if he had known some of his recruitment would happen this late. That match might have provided valuable time on the pitch for players who now need to get up to speed during a Champions League tie.
The media clearly does not know what Celtic are doing from one hour to the next, so the fact names are being thrown around today may mean absolutely nothing. But talk that we are still “monitoring” players fills me with disquiet.
After all these months of preparation, you would like to think that inside Celtic somebody knew exactly who the number-one midfield target was if Engels left. You would like to think that deal was ready to be advanced immediately. Frankly, it should have been done before Engels was allowed through the door.
The assumption many people made was that Celtic would never sanction that sale unless the replacement was effectively lined up. A weekend in which very little seems to have happened has badly undermined that assumption, just as assumptions that we would never have sold Kyogo or Kuhn without a Plan B were similarly blown apart.
Nobody is demanding that Celtic suddenly go out today and spend tens of millions of pounds. But consider this.
About three weeks ago on the podcast, after Hearts had been comfortably dismantled by Sturm Graz, we had a discussion about what would have happened if Celtic had finished second and been drawn against that side in the condition we were in at the time. We all reached basically the same conclusion.
They would probably have beaten us comfortably as well.
Now look at where we are.
We are not preparing to face some random Austrian side which scraped into Europe. We are playing the Austrian champions.
And if you accept that Haissem Hassan is not yet fit enough to start and play the full ninety minutes, and you accept that Mika Baur has not yet had enough time to be fully integrated either, then look at what has happened to the team since that discussion.
We have lost Engels. We have lost Maeda. We have lost Alistair Johnston to injury.
And suddenly you realise something rather alarming; we may actually be going into this tie against the Austrian champions with a weaker available team in several areas than the one we had when we watched Sturm Graz dismantle Hearts.
That should be a sobering thought for everybody.
The team which lines up tomorrow may be stronger through the middle up front. But the right side is weaker. The left side is weaker. The midfield is certainly weaker without Engels unless somebody arrives immediately and can somehow contribute.
And yet people want to tell me that the board has done a tremendous job preparing Celtic for these games. Fine. Sell me on it. Give me your best pitch.
Tell me how this represents optimum preparation for a tie worth somewhere in the region of £50 million to this football club. Tell me why Celtic are going into one of the most financially and competitively important fixtures of the season without being in the strongest position we could reasonably have put ourselves in.
Because that is the question. Not whether Celtic have signed some good players. They have. Not whether I like Høgh, Hassan and Baur. I do. The question is whether Celtic did everything reasonably within their power to have the strongest possible squad properly prepared for tomorrow night.
And I don’t think anybody can honestly say that they did.
The deadline is approaching and, as I write this, I no longer believe we are going to strengthen in a way which materially improves tomorrow night’s options for the manager. Perhaps I will be proved wrong.
I hope I am. But even if somebody walks through the door tonight, the broader criticism survives. I said Celtic had to maximise every possible advantage ahead of these games, even if an individual decision improved our chances by only one per cent. That should be the mentality. One more player. One more training session. One more competitive game together. One more chance at integration. One more tiny percentage point in our favour.
Instead, this board behaves with an infuriating mixture of complacency, risk-aversion and arrogance. And the irony is that its obsession with avoiding small risks repeatedly exposes Celtic to enormous ones.
We don’t have a gigantic television deal. We don’t have the financial insulation enjoyed by clubs in England and some of Europe’s other major leagues.
That means Celtic cannot afford to gamble with revenue swings of £20 million, £30 million or potentially considerably more because we were reluctant to spend money we were going to spend anyway at the time when spending it would have done us the most good.
That is not prudence. That is false economy. And this is the gamble Celtic repeatedly take when European qualifiers arrive. Wait. Haggle. Delay. Hope. Get the player eventually. Then wonder why the team was not properly prepared when the biggest games came around.
We have lost our last five qualifiers of this type. Five. Yet here we are again, approaching another one with obvious weaknesses unresolved and players who were identified months ago only just getting to know their teammates.
The board will hope Celtic get through. So will I. But hope is not preparation.
And if we fall short again, nobody should dare pretend that every reasonable step was taken beforehand to make sure we didn’t. Because it wasn’t.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
The position that worries me or tomorrow is the right back position. AJ could not have gotten injured at a worse time, for his back ups AR and CD are not nearly good enough to do a solid job in his place. That area is there to be exploited by the opposition and I would even play either Scales or Tierney there to begin with, for we need someone we can depend upon.
Im not worried about tomorrows game. We are playing the Austrian champions. Whoever gets through is going to get slapped about the UCL.
The Austrian league is higher quality than the scottish league as we saw in the Hearts game. Austria has twice the population of Scotland so we certainly shouldn’t feel entitled to win games against these sort of teams.
We have won 14 out of 15 titles. If we played in the Austrian league we would be lucky to have won 2 or 3.
Look at what Salzburg did to us when Rodgers was here and Deila also I believe.
James a couple of seasons ago you were saying we could win the europa league if we ever played in it. While I think that is an exaggeration it is far closer to our level. What PSG and Arsenal play is an entirely different ball game.
Spot on James, these clowns on the board will hope we dont qualify so they don’t need to pay add ons to the transfers, when there is a £50 million bounty sitting to be claimed
Not
Another
Penny.
Haven’t heard that for a while. Is that even a thing anymore?
It is all utterly exasperating. The dates for this game were known months ago. The board should have planned for Engels’ replacement the minute that first bid from Nottingham Forest came in with a view to having him the door days after the transfer window opened. The guiding principle must always be to have new players signed in the summer window early so they are fully ready for the first competitive game of a new season. It’s not rocket science – though it apparently is to this board.
For those who don’t know, the Austrian Bundesliga is ranked 27th place in Europe’s League system, the Scottish Premier League is ranked 42nd. So we are going to have our work cut out to win this tie, it’s a real toughie and we can take nothing for granted.
This is possibly the hardest draw we could have got. The Norewgian champs probably the only one that was tougher.
We really suffer because our league is so easy to win.
Again I need to ask:
If Hassan and Baur were signed too late to be ready to prepare for this tie, then can another signing made one day before the match be ready to do the same thing?
I would say it’s hit or miss ….some players can have outstanding debuts.
I know it’s a cliche but the midfield is the engine room of the team, if part of that isn’t functioning then the whole team doesn’t function properly. The Celtic recruitment policy is a mystery, Bernardo loaned out, Engels sold and OX suspended then panic Baur who could have been signed weeks ago is suddenly in the door, with Celtic paying the full whack, another bit of failed poker playing. If there’s a way of bringing criticism upon themselves, the people in charge of our recruitment will find it. If the players available, i.e McGregor, Nygren,Baur, McCowan and Hatate can play to their best, then we could get out of jail.
I’m a glass half full guy and maybe a bit naive for a guy of my age, but I can’t help but think back to MON’s run to Seville which started out with being dumped out of the CL in the final qualifier against Basel. Then the road to Seville was opened up in the UEFA Cup, and gave the support great memories, although I’ve got to say the quality of that team was a good bit better than our present day team.
I agree micmac, the europa league is more our level and UCL would be about money only.. apart from the fact we might see some of the best teams in the world. Anyone who gets a group match v Celtic or LASK in the UCL will see it as a favourable draw.
As you say MONs team of quarter a century ago was streets ahead of the current side.
Remember that Basel team knocked Liverpool out of the UCL too, setting up a very memorable UEFA cup tie.
Sorry to say Hassan looked overweight and couldn’t run the length of himself …..I don’t think he will be in a position to threaten defenders for a while .
Possibly a late 15 minute sub until end of Sept.
I’m with micmac and Mr Mojorisin here when it comes to football levels. I don’t think we are good enough to win the Europa League but it’s not impossible. It’s harder now because of the route it gives to the following season’s CL as there is that extra motivation for big 5 league teams who might be out of the running at home. Celtic winning the Europa League would be akin to Aberdeen winning the Scottish Cup – it can and does happen. Celtic’s chances of winning the Champions League are less than Scotland’s winning the World Cup.
I don’t understand why Bernardo was loaned out so early in the window especially considering that both Engels and Hatate were expected to leave. I do understand why Engels left when he did – injuries can happen at anytime and he is now protected with a more lucrative, longer term contract in the place (London) that he wants to be. Of course we should have had a replacement in the door but then even clubs like Man City can struggle with Rodri leaving them a very big hole to fill.
Tomorrow will be tough but what follows for the winners will be tougher still.
I want to be in the champions league, we might not be capable of winning it but you want to play against the best surely? Also the financial rewards are significant and we’re not likely to be back in it for a while. Hassan didn’t look near fit and Baur is obviously still finding his feet though you’d have to think that champions league football was part of the appeal for them joining so it would be daft not to use them. I definitely wouldn’t start Hassan mind you.
Brattbakk – I think it depends on the player as to whether he wants to test himself. Someone like McGregor will know his level and that he is heading for night of pain against a PSG or an Arsenal. The younger players will probably see it as an opportunity to get seen (with a view to a move…). It won’t happen but what UEFA needs to do is adjust the revenue share across its three competitions (and that would include increasing the payments to national associations to distribute to non-competing teams (otherwise the gap between rich and poor will grow). Miguel Delaney’s book States of Play is a good read on the subject of money and politics destroying our game.
Yeah, great post porto.
Presently the players dont give a fuck about the UCL.
Celtic is a stepping stone..look at Engels and Maeda. They are leaving Celtic with very little chance of champions league football ever again but they also know celtic are going to get fucked daft in the UCL by the big boys with zero chance of progression.
Celtic is a stepping stone, easy trophies then move on to see if they can make it in the big time..most wont be good enough.
For every 100 Gary Hoopers or Kyogos you will get 1 VVD.
Brattbakk, we honestly don’t belong in the UCL. Some were raving when we got to the last 24 a couple of years ago but we got a fantastic draw. Still Dortmund put 7 past us. We honestly dont belong there and in the last 15 years many teams have put 5, 6 or 7 past us. We have taken the biggest gubbings in scottish football history over a short space of time. The only reason it hasn’t been double figures is because teams ease off after 5 or 6 and put a load of subs on.
One day it will be double figures though.
Europa league is where we should be. UCL is prostitution, capitalist greed and humiliation!
I’ve looked at the potential pots for the CL league phase an anyone, including other pot one teams, can lose by 6 or 7 to the teams in pot one. With pots two and three you need a bit of luck with the draw and pot four is where we should be looking for 6 points. Even in the last 16 last year, Bayern beat Atalanta 10-2 on aggregate, Barca beat Newcastle 7-2 at the Camp Nou, sometimes the top teams hit form and you get a doing. It’s not unique to Celtic and it’s still the biggest show in football.
PSG beat us 5-0 at CP and 7-1 in Paris. It could easy be more. Of course its not unique to us but there is an inevitability about it.
8-0 is our record defeat.
Only luck that it hasn’t been beaten in the last 15 years.
We are making up the numbers with zero chance of winning it.