Weaker than they were at the turn of the year, no new signings on the radar, putting silly lowball offers into other clubs when there is a pressing need for new players and with a manager now actively calling out the board in public and revealing that he hasn’t been offered a new deal with his current contract having less than a year to run.
We are now beyond just taking it for granted that everything is going to be all right on the night at Parkhead and very definitely into the realm of asking the question on the lips of more and more fans as this transfer window rumbles on: What the heck are Celtic playing at?
If proof were needed that such issues and concerns are no longer just the preserve of the often-pilloried ‘panty-wetters’ among the champions’ support base, it came on Friday. Through both barrels. Manager Brendan Rodgers could not have been clearer.
He needs new faces. He is not interested in just staying ahead of the pack in Scotland. He got through the group stage of the Champions League last term and wants to build on that. He needs the board to listen and get the finger out.
That’s before we even begin looking more deeply into why conversations with major shareholder Dermot Desmond and CEO Michael ‘Mr Invisible’ Nicholson have not resulted in some kind of contract offer being pitched to the Northern Irishman as his current arrangement runs down.
Celtic will bring in reinforcements before the close of the window. They might yet get through this unscathed, but why are they taking such an unnecessary gamble on the season ahead?
Brendan Rodgers chose the eve of the new season to drop his latest pointed comments
Celtic have endured a mixed pre-season but the 5-1 loss against Ajax was a major concern
Marco Tilio has a deal agreed with Rapid Vienna but his exit would leave the squad short
In league terms, there’s a big test on the horizon in the visit to Aberdeen next weekend. Play as badly as they did in the Scottish Cup final and they’ll lose.
More importantly, though, the first leg of the Champions League qualifying play-off is just over two weeks away. Even if the ‘two or three high-quality additions’ Rodgers has been banging on about did arrive tomorrow — and they won’t — is there really enough time to get them up to speed and bedded-in for that shoot-out carrying a potential worth of upwards of £40million?
Sure, tomorrow’s draw might be kind. Celtic might get a Kairat or a Slovan Bratislava or a Qarabag.
On the other hand, they might get the Swiss champions FC Basel or the likes of Sturm Graz of Austria. With a squad lacking balance and short of options in key areas, these have the distinct look of a couple of high-wire acts waiting to happen.
Everyone’s been saying it this week, but it’s true. It is bonkers that the club won’t sell Marco Tilio to Rapid Vienna because they don’t have enough cover in the wide areas. The season starts tonight with the visit of St Mirren and the options on the wings consist of the lesser-spotted Aussie, Daizen Maeda, the underwhelming Yang Hyun-jun and a past-it James Forrest. That’s it.
Maeda has to play out left because anything else would be madness. That means it’s almost certainly going to be Adam Idah through the middle.
James Forrest could see a lot more action this season given the lack of wingers at the club
To these eyes, the Irishman’s chance to nail down the centre-forward role came and went earlier in the year when he couldn’t hold down a place following the departure of Kyogo Furuhashi. He’s not up to being the main man in attack.
Celtic botched it when failing to put an option to buy in Idah’s initial loan deal from Norwich and ended up paying over the odds at £8.5m plus add-ons. That’s no longer the main problem, though.
Personal opinions on Idah aside, these are the facts. When Furuhashi was sold for £10m to Rennes and the board didn’t buy a replacement, Rodgers ultimately went with Maeda, a guy he hadn’t planned to move inside from the wing, at centre-forward.
If Idah wasn’t capable enough to be the Furuhashi replacement then, why should that change now? Shin Yamada is on the scene as well, of course, but it is unrealistic to throw him at the deep end.
That Celtic are in this situation just speaks to rank bad planning. Furuhashi made it clear he wanted to leave long before his January departure to France. In the same vein, the only surprise in winger Nicolas Kuhn leaving this summer was that Como paid £17m for his services.
Celtic knew well in advance that both of these guys were on the way out, so why weren’t replacements lined up? There is interest in Denmark Under-21 wide man Jakob Breum of Go Ahead Eagles, but that saga has become an embarrassment.
Adam Idah has failed to prove he can be the long-term successor to Kyogo Furuhashi
The Dutch club want £5m-plus. Celtic have put in several bids way short of that. This is a club overflowing with money and a season now upon them. If Breum is a guy Rodgers really wants, they need to get closer to what the Dutch are demanding and get it done.
This is where it gets really interesting, though. It stands to reason that Rodgers might want to use his contract position as leverage. To say: ‘If you want me to stay longer, you need to show your ambition’.
However, big money was splashed last season with doubts over the bang-for-your-buck received. Idah, Arne Engels, Auston Trusty, Paulo Bernardo and the injured Jota cost nearly £40m in transfer fees alone. Not one of them has lived up to their price tag so far and, whether you want to drone on about how values are not decided by the players themselves, the modern game dictates that’s what their output is measured on.
Are we looking at a situation where the Parkhead board simply aren’t prepared to sanction that kind of outlay again on the basis of what last term’s recruits delivered? Maybe they want assurances over Rodgers’ longer-term commitment before going all scattercash again, but they’d need to put a contract offer in front of him to test that out. And they haven’t.
Either way, it feels like there is tension behind-doors and not enough positivity in the pipeline.
In addition to requiring experienced back-up to Kieran Tierney at left-back, Celtic needed more cover in the centre of defence too. Cameron Carter-Vickers historically suffers his share of injuries.
There are concerns chief executive Nicholson’s vision is not fully aligned with that of Rodgers
Trusty lost his place towards the end of last season and was on the bench for the cup final while Liam Scales, Stephen Welsh and Dane Murray have their limitations.
Yet, Rodgers says no more centre-halves will be coming in with the only arrival an untried 19-year-old on a loan deal in the shape of Manchester City’s Jahmai Simpson-Pusey.
Callum McGregor is 32 with serious mileage on the clock. Is it feasible to base a campaign on leaning so heavily again on him in midfield?
And that’s before we even address the very distinct possibility of offers being tabled for the likes of Reo Hatate, Engels or Maeda. Teams are interested.
As discussed, the draw for the Champions League might serve up a tie that should be shooty-in no matter who pulls on the green and white. Fresh blood of some sort will be integrated into the starting line-up. Eventually.
But where would we stand if a Basel, for example, have dumped Celtic out of UEFA’s major competition before then on August 27 — with a visit to Ibrox in the first Old Firm league game of the season next up, just four days on?
Rodgers’ Friday address felt reminiscent of the events that led to Terminado-time back in 2019, but he’d surely blow the doors off if he gets snared up in that kind of perfect storm.
Rodgers said this week he does not want to be just ‘maintaining’ things as Celtic manager
With every passing week of inaction and every plea for assistance from the manager, such an unthinkable scenario feels just that little bit more possible. And if it does all kick off, Celtic will have had it coming.
How they have even allowed this to become a widespread conversation topic, an imaginable scenario, when sitting in such an apparent position of strength is already very difficult to work out.
Farewell words were a Propper embarrassment
Robin Propper’s evaluation of his quite hopeless year at Rangers felt like it offered a telling insight into why things have been so badly wrong at Ibrox.
‘I completely disagree that I somehow failed at Rangers,’ he stated, after finally completing a return to his former club Twente Enschede.
Propper won nothing in Glasgow. He lost his place in the team having been signed as the bloke who was going to shore up an underperforming rearguard.
Robin Propper never managed to convince fans he was the rock-steady defender they craved
Quite early on, everyone and their Auntie had clocked he just wasn’t going to cut it in the rough and tumble of the Premiership and would have to be ushered out the door tout-suite.
‘I had a wonderful time at Rangers,’ he continued, ‘and the four of us as a family spent a lovely year in Glasgow.’
A lovely year? He helped play a part in getting the manager who signed him, Philippe Clement, the tin tack. He was in the starting line-up in the home win against St Johnstone in January in which everything falling apart on and off the pitch came to a head — resulting in a walkout by a group of punters and an absolutely funereal, atrocious atmosphere.
The club was coming apart at the seams under the old board. Fans had simply had enough. It was anything but lovely, but Propper’s words just come across as a well-remunerated player who spent his time there with his head in the sand, divorced from the harsh reality that eventually resulted in an absolutely essential takeover by Andrew Cavenagh’s US consortium.
Propper’s reflections are just the latest thing to back up former first-team coach Billy Dodds’ comments about the squad lacking the right mentality last term and 70-per-cent of the players not being suited to what Rangers is all about.
Propper enjoyed his goal against Celtic but is was one of precious few highlights
One positive thing about new head coach Russell Martin’s approach is that he accepts the need to win every week as he endeavours to restructure the squad, the culture and the style of play.
Getting shot of Propper was clearly a sound move. Now, he needs sporting director Kevin Thelwell to ship out more of the deadwood — because the Ibrox outfit’s first-team squad right now is so bloated that it could stretch the entire length of Edmiston Drive and back again.
Bloom’s Hearts Q&A is sure to be fascinating
How exciting, how new it feels to those of us of a certain vintage, that settling down in front of the telly this evening after the roast pork, red biddy and rumtopf pudding will involve tuning in to the YouTube channel run by Heart of Midlothian.
Investor Tony Bloom is in town for tomorrow night’s league curtain-raiser against Aberdeen and is to put meat on the bones of his plan to ‘disrupt’ Scottish football at a Tynecastle Q&A run by the Foundation of Hearts and due to kick-off from 7pm.
Tony Bloom will outline his vision for Hearts’ future ahead of their Premiership opener
Bloom’s success with his data-driven models at Brighton and Union Saint-Gilloise is well known.
Hearts look like they are building the foundations of something really interesting under new boss Derek McInnes and the players signed so far.
Bloom’s spoken determination to shake up the Old Firm has been a breath of fresh air. Actually hearing him detail how he plans to make that happen in his first proper public appearance should be fascinating.
It’s going to be essential viewing, all right. Not just for Jambos fans, but for everyone interested in seeing the landscape, dynamics and ambitions of Scottish football change.
