Echoes of Ange as Rodgers pleads with Celtic board to sign the players he needs

Brendan Rodgers has admitted that he has been unable to convince the Celtic board that he really needs players- but will continue to pursue the club to improve his squad and starting XI.

It really is an odd position where a club that entered the transfer window with around £80m in the bank is sitting on another transfer surplus while having glaring gaps in the squad.

Most managers experience  it at some stage but they rarely go public with their thoughts, generally at this time of the transfer window clubs know what is needed in terms of recruitment and explore every opportunity to bring success.

It seems that Michael Nicholson still values the Balance Sheet more highly that the team-sheet, a situation that will be familiar to Ange Postecoglou.

Four years ago after losing to Midtjylland in a Champions League qualifier he admitted ‘I obviously haven’t done a good enough job convincing people we needed to bring people in.’

That was quickly followed by action with eight signings made in the final five weeks of the transfer window.

Over the last four seasons with the advent of five substitutes wingers have been vital to the style of play under both Rodgers and Postecoglou.

Seeing Liel Abada and James Forrest coming off the bench in the 67th minute to test tiring defenders was a nightmare for clubs to deal with after facing Jota and Daizen Maeda from the kick-off.

Marco Tilio, Yang Hyun-jun and Luis Palma never really had the same impact.

In January it looked like Rodgers was getting that area of his side strengthened with the return of Jota but his injury and the sale of Nicolas Kuhn has left his winger options decimated.

Como first made contact with Kuhn towards the end of last season, the winger was left out of Celtic’s pre-season matches against Queens Park and Cork City with his transfer announced on July 11.

A month later Celtic have failed to sign a winger. Interest in Michel-Ange Balikwisha and Jakob Breum wasn’t converted into signings despite Celtic sitting on a transfer surplus of around £20m from the summer window.

Rodgers held a lengthy media conference this afternoon, no fireworks were launched as he largely kept his feelings in check although there were a few tell tale signs about the failings to recruit first team ready players.

5 minutes 50 seconds:

QUESTION: Last year you got Luke and Arne in with minutes to spare, in the final hours of the window would you envisage, Would you hope to be a little bit earlier than last time around, or would you envisage a good bit of business business getting done…

Rodgers:

Yeah, I don’t really know. I think it’s… I don’t conclude the deals. The deals are…there are always time lapses on them for different reasons. But I think that, come the end of that period, of course, we would have wanted to… we would love to get players in earlier. There’s no doubt I would have liked to have players in now, but it’s not the case.

So I’m not going to kill my own joy and overthinking stuff. I focus on what’s here. We know the work that we need to do, and it’s my responsibility to convince the club that we really need them, clearly I’m not doing that job as well as maybe what I can, but I will continue to pursue that because it’s something that’s really important for us.

It’s all so unnecessary. The lack of togetherness is caused by a silent board unwilling to listen or engage with the support. The board are creating a situation that can be avoided by simply communicating with their own supporters. It’s incredibly frustrating 🍀

— Football1967 (@Football19671) August 1, 2025

Rodgers mentioned failing to convince the club of the need to sign players, five years earlier Postecoglou had very similar thoughts after his second competitive match in charge of Celtic.

After losing out in extra-time away to Midtjylland in a second round Champions League qualifier The Guardian reported the former Celtic boss saying:

I take responsibility. I’m the person who has been put in charge. We haven’t got players in, I obviously haven’t done a good enough job convincing people we needed to bring people in. I’m not going to shy away from it. I don’t say that because I’m some kind of martyr, I just think that’s my responsibility, that’s why I was brought in.

I have been trying to be as forceful as I can about what we need to bring in, and the challenges we have had are well chronicled. Irrespective of the result tonight, we still need reinforcements. We had a really young squad out there, young players on the bench. It’s not a situation we need to be in.

Liel Abada was the only new signing involved in the matches against the Danish club. In Celtic’s next match Carl Starfelt and Kyogo Furuhashi made their debuts, within a week Joe Hart and James McCarthy were signed. Josip Juranovic was signed on August 28 and made his debut three days later at Ibrox, on Deadline Day they were joined by Giorgos Giakoumakis, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Jota.

The current situation is clearly complicated by Rodgers now being into the final year of his contract.

The uneasy peace between the manager and others at the club has held up after Dermot Desmond stepped in two years ago to bring the former Leicester boss back to Scottish football.

Rodgers has met every KPI imaginable despite being handed the worst batch of signings imaginable during the 2023 summer transfer window. He got a limited tune out of Palma and Yang and ditched the rest, brought in Kuhn and Adam Idah to secure a domestic double and access to the expanded Champions League group phase.

Away to Bayern Munich in the Last 16 Play Off there was no Kyogo replacement to bring on with the match level on aggregate. An opportunity lost.

Rodgers is still waiting on a replacement striker to arrive.

That situation has been repeated over the sale of Kuhn.

Rodgers will be hosting regular media conferences as the days are ticked off to this season’s Champions League Play Off and the end of the transfer window.

He may manage to convince the power brokers that new signings are required but it is hard to imagine that he’ll be signing up to a new contract for more of the same with Nicholson reluctant to back a highly successful manager that is hitting and surpassing every reasonable target put in front of him.

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