Celtic are saving for a rainy day ... but Rodgers’ team are already waist deep in water
WITH each passing week, Celtic look like they are getting exactly the kind of season they deserve. Out of the League Cup at the first hurdle, eliminated from Europe again with a game to spare, and now overtaken at the top of the table. Their best hope of salvaging something appears to rest with a rub of the green in the Scottish Cup.
While retaining the Premiership is clearly not yet beyond them, there is little in the form book to suggest this will happen over the course of the next 12 games. Even when Brendan Rodgers’ side wins these days, it tends to be an almighty struggle.
An eight-point lead in November is now a two-point deficit. The momentum has switched. Having stayed the pace then made up the ground, Philippe Clement’s Rangers just do not have the look of a side that will now implode.
While the Belgian is due so much credit for the job he’s presided over since succeeding Michael Beale, his impact is only half of the story of the season to date.
In possession of all three domestic trophies and with a ticket granting them direct entry to the Champions League last June, Celtic’s position of strength was hard to overstate.
Even with Ange Postecoglou moving to Spurs, Jota lured to Saudi, Carl Starfelt heading to Spain and Aaron Mooy retiring, they had ample time and money to recalibrate and go again.
When a boardroom delegation flew to Majorca and persuaded Rodgers to return to the club, the Northern Irishman (right) talked about his ambition of winning a European trophy within five years.
Not unreasonably, the assumption made was that he’d be given the autonomy and the means to at least give it a shot.
Nine months on, the reality could not have been more different.
What’s transpired across two transfer windows in Glasgow’s east end actually defies all logic.
Ignoring Rodgers’ plea for four first-team-ready players with ‘pace and power’ in the summer, Celtic acquired a job lot of projects and loan signings.
The sum spent — just north of £14million by the time Tomoki Iwata’s compulsory purchase went through — was fairly substantial (although £29m came in from the sales of Jota and Starfelt alone).
The difficulty wasn’t so much what was spent. It was how it was spent.
Maik Nawrocki, £4.3m buy, has had injury issues but is now a regular fixture on the bench. Gustaf Lagerbielke, at £3m, and Odin Thiago Holm, a £2.5m signing, have not even got that far lately.
Marco Tilio cost £1.5m and is already back on loan in Australia. Kwon Hyeok-kyu didn’t play a single minute before moving to St Mirren for the rest of the campaign. Luis Palma started brightly but has regressed to the point where he was substituted at half-time against Kilmarnock on Saturday. The Honduran is 24 — not 19. He’s not come close to justifying a £3.5m outlay. Yang Hyun-jun is three years younger, has ability but is still far too erratic. Paulo Bernardo, the on-loan Benfica midfielder, has had some fine moments but just not enough of them. Evidently convinced they could deliver the players their manager was looking for — but for a fraction of the price — Celtic got exactly what they paid for. With Rangers toiling in the latter days of Beale’s tenure, the points Celtic dropped against St Johnstone, Hibs and Motherwell were more viewed as an annoyance than a disaster. But when a string of laboured performances bled into back-to-back defeats to Kilmarnock and Hearts, even the happy clappers in the stand stopped clapping.
Consistent in his messaging about the need for quality to arrive in January, Rodgers’ stance following that home loss to the Gorgie side was backed-up by skipper Callum McGregor.
‘We’ve got a transfer window that can help the group and that needs to be a big window to help us,’ the midfielder bluntly stated on December 16. ‘We need players to help the squad. I’m not talking specifics, I’m talking quality coming through the door. That can be in any position, it’s the manager and those guys’ job (recruitment) to do that.
‘I think we need bodies and we need quality to come in and help us. Every season when we look at it, we want to be better.
‘We come back in off winning a Treble, how do we get better? You have to freshen up the place. You lose five or six big players from last season, so you then have to go and replace that if you want to keep on being successful.
‘You have to find a way to rejuvenate the team and find the next Jota, find the next crop of players that are going to go and make you successful.
‘So, that’s a target for the club all the time and they are always looking.
‘We’re missing the quality from last season and so we need to add to that. I think that’s obvious.’
It was as plain as the nose on your face. As was the fact that, in Clement, Rangers had finally hired a manager who knew how to win football matches.
Celtic’s collective response in January was risible. With the need to acquire four experienced big hitters now screaming out at them, they signed Adam Idah and Nicolas Kuhn.
On the limited evidence to date, on-loan Norwich forward Idah looks to have something about him. Despite scoring on his debut at Aberdeen, German winger Kuhn — another signing circa £3m — has yet to really catch the eye.
Trying to pour oil on choppy waters after an underwhelming transfer window closed, Rodgers claimed the club had been frustrated in their efforts to get what they wanted in a notoriously difficult month to do business by selling clubs digging their heels in.
Be that as it may. But Rangers didn’t seem to encounter quite the same obstacles when they drafted in Fabio Silva, Oscar Cortes and Mohamed Diomande.
The Ivorian, a £4.3m signing from Nordsjaelland, scored his first goal on Sunday as Rangers went top of the Premiership by winning at St Johnstone.
Grasping the importance of winning a title which opens to door to the vast riches of next season’s eight-game minimum Champions League, the Ibrox club turned out their pockets last month.
Unfathomably, Celtic once again stockpiled cash for a rainy day even though they were already waist deep in water.
With the Parkhead club on a repeat cycle of league titles and Champions League cash maintaining a sizeable financial gap, it was hard to see an end to their generation of dominance last summer.
But the fork in the road may not be too far away now.