The Hoops board have been guilty of falling asleep at the wheel again
Celtic’s season has well and truly imploded and it’s time for those behind the downfall to stop passing the buck and take responsibility before it’s too late.
Let’s start with the manager. Brendan Rodgers prides himself on being a development coach, but the Treble-winning team he inherited from Ange Postecoglou has regressed at an alarming rate. Aside from Matt O’Riley and maybe Liam Scales, what players has he actually improved?
Kyogo is a shadow of the unstoppable force that plundered 34 goals last season. The Japanese striker – considered by some fans as the best since Henrik Larsson – must be wondering what’s going on having been starved of any quality service from his teammates.
That comes down to poor recruitment. Yes, the blame must lie with Mark Lawwell (we’ll get to him in a minute) but Rodgers made it clear at the AGM that he gave the green light to every summer signing. If the boss gives his blessing to shelling out £20million on nine recruits, don’t then constantly bemoan the lack of quality within the squad. Work with the tools that you’ve got, which surely must be capable of beating St Johnstone, Motherwell and Kilmarnock.
Rodgers’ success during his first spell at Parkhead was unprecedented but if you look at his transfer record, it was woeful. Fortunes wasted on Marvin Compper, Cristian Gamboa, Eboue Kouassi, Vakoun Issouf Bayo. The list goes on and on. Lee Congerton shouldered the blame but these guys were brought in on Rodgers’ watch.
And it’s a familiar story during his second tenure, with chairman Peter Lawwell’s son now the head of recruitment. The last three transfer windows have been a total waste of time. Aside from Luis Palma, none of the nine summer signings have made any sort of impact on the squad this campaign.
And it was largely the same last term with the likes of Sead Haksabanovic, Yuki Kobayashi, Oli Abilgaard, Ben Siegrist, Tomoki Iwata and Alexandro Bernabei all failing to impress. The jury remains out on Oh Hyeon-gyu and Alistair Johnston, while free agent Aaron Mooy has since retired.
They did still manage to romp to a clean sweep but this year there’s no doubt that Celtic have missed a golden opportunity to 1) leave Rangers in their rearview mirror and 2) make serious inroads in the Champions League. Instead, they’ve fallen asleep at the wheel (again) and become content with being just that bit better than their Glasgow rivals instead of driving on.
There comes a point where you have to show ambition and intent to fulfill the huge potential this club has but the board appears to be happy with mediocrity. Instead of reinvesting the Jota money on project signings, Celts should have addressed the glaring positions that required strengthening and still do as we reach the halfway point of the campaign.
Joe Hart has been a solid servant but a new No1 is badly required. Greg Taylor is fine domestically but out of his depth at the elite level. While Jota and Giorgios Giakoumakis have yet to be replaced.
Are those the four “quality” signings Rodgers craved in the summer? Probably. Would you trust the recruitment team to identify and sign those targets in January? Probably not.
As for the board, they’ve been guilty of playing it safe for years and now there’s a genuine title fight from a resurgent team across the city, the chickens will come home to roost.
It’s mind-boggling that a board that has £70m-plus sitting in the bank has allowed Celtic, once a giant in European football, to become a laughingstock in the Champions League. And spare me the nonsense about the gap between Celtic and the so-called heavyweights.
This year, they were pitted alongside two bang-average teams in Feyenoord and Lazio, and were still knocked out of Europe with a game to spare. The year before, they couldn’t get three points against equally similar levels outfits in Shakhtar Donetsk and RB Leipzig.
Those in charge of the club can bemoan the financial gulf but there’s absolutely no reason why Celtic shouldn’t be able to compete with the aforementioned. After every European thumping, the same cliches are rhymed out about how lessons will be learned. It’s time the board learned a lesson from Copenhagen on how to build a competitive European football club without a defeatist attitude – like Postecoglou was in the process of single-handedly doing himself.
He told punters to dream of beating Real Madrid. Yes, it didn’t happen but he breathed hope into a fanbase and a team deprived of any meaningful European success in a decade instead of constantly being reminded about the money these teams have at their disposal. Gordon Strachan’s class of 2007/08 put European champions AC Milan to the sword. Neil Lennon overcame one of the greatest football teams ever in Barcelona. Nowadays, it feels like Celtic have already been beaten before they walk out onto the pitch.
As for the ongoing battle with the Green Brigade, it’s time Michael Nicholson found the time to sit around a table with the fan group and end this petty war-of-words.
Aside from the boos on Saturday and celebrations in the Jambos corner, you could hear a pin drop, just like every home game since the ban was imposed at the start of November. It feels like the club has had the life sucked right out of it and it’s now down to Rodgers, Lawwell and Nicholson to save the season – or else they’ll face the music from the Green Brigade and thousands of others in the coming weeks.
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