Calm Doon- Lawwell’s transfer message to angry Celtic fans in Paisley

Peter Lawwell has told Celtic fans to Calm Doon over the club’s failure to add any outfield signings to Brendan Rodgers squad.

The Celtic Chairman stopped briefly to answer complaints from fans before heading for the hospitality of the Directors Box ahead of the 3-0 win over St Mirren that maintained Celtic’s 100% record at the top of the table.

Celtic went into that match without Matt O’Riley who is undergoing a medical at Brighton with the expected fee of £28m set to send the Celtic bank balance crashing well past the £100m mark.

On Thursday Celtic will discover their Champions League opponents which promises much tougher opposition that Kilmarnock, Hibs and St Mirren with Season Ticket holders likely to be charged £200 for the four home matches.

The current squad looks very capable of maintaining their dominance over the dross served up in Scottish football but there are painful scars among fans over European nights as the Directors oversee a booming bank balance while credibility of the park hits rock bottom.

Over 17 years as CEO Lawwell put the current structure in place, after allowing Dom McKay three months as CEO he was toppled with the Lawwell groomed duo of Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay taking control of day to day running of the club.

After two brilliantly successful transfer windows under Ange Postecoglouthe arrival of Mark Lawwell applied the handbrake, Dad’s appointment as Celtic Chairman in January 2023 put the club into reverse gear with a return to the levels of Recruitment that brought in Vakoun Bayo, Ismaila Soro, Patryk Klimala, Maria Shved, Albian Ajeti, Vasilis Barkas, Youssuf Mulumbu and many more write-offs.

All season long Brendan Rodgers has been trying to gently prompt Nicholson into recruiting first team ready players after last summer’s horrendous job lot of project signings.

The first day of pre-season training was missed for new arrivals, there was no new outfield players involved in the three match trip to the USA and no one added to the squad as Celtic started the SPFL campaign on August 4.

Lawwell is the person that most fans believe is running the show, speaking after today’s win Rodgers made it very clear that the club’s Recruitment strategy has again failed:

It’s taken a lot longer than I would have liked as the football manager. That’s my brutally honest answer on it but I will repeat this. If we get them in, then there’s still a long season ahead. So it’s important that we do get that and I have belief that we will do.

There are a number of things I won’t go into here but it [not signing players early enough] is definitely something, having come back in and gone through three windows now, we have to put right as a football club.

We shouldn’t have been getting into this last week in the position we’re in. That’s the reality. However, that’s something for us for after this window.

With O’Riley sold the big fear is that there could be more departures this week from Celtic with no sign of the club preparing for an eight match Champions League campaign that runs from September 17 through until mid January.