Celtic must do more to get the true value out of our big signings.

Kasper Høgh is an £11 million player. Haissem Hassan is an £8 million player. Camilo Duran is a £6 million player.

That is £25 million worth of attacking talent.

These are not three cheap punts Celtic can simply move on from if things do not work out. They are three major investments, and that means the current problems at Celtic are about much more than poor performances and poor results.

They are also about what we are doing — or, more importantly, what we are not doing — with the players we have bought.

If Celtic cannot find a system which allows Høgh, Hassan and Duran to play to their strengths, we are not simply risking a few bad results.

We are risking £25 million in transfer value and potentially years of carrying expensive contracts attached to players whose value could fall because the club never created the right environment for them to succeed.

That should worry everyone.

Footballers are not computer-game characters. You cannot simply buy a player because his statistics look good, drop him into whatever formation happens to be available and expect him to reproduce the same performances automatically.

A player needs a role. He needs relationships around him. He needs teammates who understand his movement. He needs a system which creates the situations in which his qualities become useful.

And above all, he needs to know what the manager actually wants from him.

Look at Høgh. Celtic have spent around £11 million on him. That is a huge investment for this club, and naturally a fee like that brings expectations.

But what happens if we continually ask him to operate in a way which does not suit his game? What happens if he becomes isolated, the midfield cannot supply him and the attacking structure fails to create the chances he needs?

Eventually the conversation changes.

People stop asking whether the system is helping the player and start saying the £11 million player is not good enough.

That is exactly what we should avoid.

Sometimes a player does not fail because the player is bad.

Sometimes the system fails the player.

The same applies to Hassan and Duran. £8 million is serious money for Celtic, and Hassan should be developed as an investment rather than simply thrown onto the pitch in the hope that something happens.

Duran has already shown flashes of what he can bring. We have seen pace, movement, attacking intent and goals.

But flashes are not enough.

The responsibility of a football club is to build an environment in which those flashes become consistency.

That is what development actually means.

And development is not something which ends when a player leaves the academy. When you spend this kind of money on young or developing attackers, you are not just buying the player they are today.

You are buying the player you believe they can become.

Celtic then has a responsibility to help them become it.

Because the worst-case scenario is obvious: three expensive players, three substantial contracts and three players whose confidence begins to suffer because they are being asked to operate inside a structure which does not suit them.

Then, eventually, Celtic decides to sell.

But who pays a major fee for a player whose development has stalled?

That is how value disappears.

This is why the current problems cannot be viewed purely through results. Results are simply the visible part.

Underneath them are structural consequences.

Bad tactics affect player development. They affect confidence. They affect recruitment. They affect transfer values. They affect how future players view the club. And eventually they affect Celtic financially.

Imagine spending £25 million on three attacking players and then failing to create a functioning attacking structure around them.

That would not merely be bad football.

It would be terrible business.

Celtic cannot afford to operate that way.

We are not Manchester City. We cannot spend £25 million, decide six months later that the system does not suit those players and simply go out and spend another £25 million replacing them.

Every major signing has to be given the best possible chance of working.

That is the responsibility of the football department and the coaching staff.

From an English-teacher perspective, there is a useful distinction here between having potential and developing potential.

Potential is what a player might become.

Development is what the club does to get him there.

Right now, the second part matters far more than the first.

Celtic need a clear footballing identity. We need defined roles for attacking players, midfielders capable of connecting the game, width when width is required, movement around the striker and enough defensive stability that the attackers are not constantly being asked to rescue matches.

Most importantly, the coaching staff has to understand what these players actually do well.

The answer cannot simply be: put them into a formation and hope.

Football does not work like that.

What we should want is obvious. In two years, nobody should be talking about Celtic struggling to move Høgh on. Nobody should be wondering what happened to Hassan’s value. Nobody should be describing Duran as another player whose potential was never properly developed.

We should be looking back and saying that this was the moment Celtic got it right.

The moment the system started making sense. The moment these players understood their roles. The moment they began developing together.

The moment £25 million of potential began turning into £25 million of genuine footballing value — and hopefully considerably more.

That is what Celtic should be thinking about now. Not simply the next result or the next formation. The club should be thinking about the next two or three years. Høgh, Hassan and Duran are not merely three names on a team sheet.

They are investments in Celtic’s future.

So, we must stop putting square pegs into round holes. Stop asking players to compensate for a system which does not work. Build the system around the strengths of the players Celtic has actually spent serious money on.

If Celtic gets this right, these three could become a huge part of the club’s future.

If Celtic gets it wrong, we will not just waste three talented footballers. We will waste millions of pounds, years of development and a huge opportunity.

That is a consequence Celtic simply cannot afford.

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