Stephen McGowan has delivered a brutal verdict on Celtic’s supposed transfer strategy.
Bargain buys Matt O’Riley and Reo Hatate have been rewarded with vastly improved new contracts while Jota has come and gone with a profit of around £15m on the back of a key role in delivering domestic success and making an impact with four goals scored away from home in European competitions.
Between those success stories there is more than a full team of players that could disappear in January and barely be noticed.
Think Siegrist, Iwata, Kobayashi, Lagerbielke, Bernabei, Kwon, Haksabanovic and Tilio for starters, for whatever reasons those players have made virtually no impact with most of them not even listed in the Champions League squad.
It seems like people inside Celtic have been hearing too much about their successful Transfer Model, thinking that there is an endless stream of projects just waiting to be packaged off to the richer leagues.
The success rates are worryingly low with the knock on effect evident in the official team picture which included 33 players with the bulk of them sitting with deals that run until 2026 or 2027.
A ruthless revamp is needed to produce a leaner squad ready for the Champions League with McGowan highlighting the importance of the next two transfer windows.
In his Daily Mail column he explains the issues facing Rodgers and the club’s recruitment team:
The trouble is that competing clubs like Red Bull Salzburg and PSV Eindhoven are already making bigger profits from transfers and snapping up the best young players for themselves.
Celtic have tried to get around this by signing projects from undeveloped markets like Japan and South Korea. After some early success, the hit rate of Ange Postecoglou’s first season has slowed significantly.
Of the 23 players signed since the summer of 2022, Jota has delivered a tidy £25m return by moving to Saudi Arabia. Cast an eye over the rest and only Cameron Carter-Vickers and Alistair Johnston are nailed-down first-team starters.
Luis Palma has delivered a few goals and assists and might do a job. For every decent signing, however, there are two or three more in a bloated squad doing nothing to stop the rot in Europe.
Celtic don’t really need the Green Brigade in their corner to compete with Europe’s best.
What Brendan Rodgers does need is freedom and autonomy to use the next two transfer windows to sign players with the pace and power to make AGMs a more harmonious affair in future.
The initial deals for Jota and Carter-Vickers were signed in 2021, the timescale covered by McGowan ties in with Mark Lawwell’s arrival as Head of First Team Recruitment and Scouting.
