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TALKING CELTIC
message from Philippe Coutinho as the new Barcelona player arrived at Camp Nou.
You are entitled as a manager to enjoy your success stories – after all there is always a queue of folk to tell you about the ones that didn’t go so well. It was a deliberate drop from Rodgers into the conversation that he had signed the player for £8.5m before Liverpool then raked in a staggering £142m for him.
And while it develops the prestige that Rodgers has of taking young players and getting the very best out of them, it does no-one any harm for that message to be reinforced.
Given just how difficult the transfer market has become, this can only work to Celtic’s benefit. It is how they were able to bring in the likes of Moussa Dembele, with Rodgers a significant part in that move.
But pre-Rodgers, the likes of Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster and Virgil van Dijk have all found Celtic to be to their benefit. You would just have to ask Southampton if they thought of how Celtic prepared them for a move south of the border.
In the current climate when it is so tough to compete with the resources of even English Championship and League One sides, having a club who can offer a young player a genuine chance to get better while also playing in the Champions League has to be a considerable carrot.
In saying that, Celtic were able to get Odsonne Edouard in on loan this summer with a view to making a move for the striker permanent.
We have seen flashes of the player but given the current pricetag that he carries of £7m, a fee that would make him Celtic’s most expensive signing, I am not sure that there will be a rush to commit just yet.
I would think that the jury will be out on that one between now and the end of the season.
You have to bear in mind that what we see of the player is not the same as what the manager sees day-to-day in training. He scored a hat-trick against Motherwell and has shown up reasonably well but I would think that for that kind of money that the player has still to convince.
In many ways, his future at the club may well depend on what happens next with Dembele. The club have maintained that there have been no offers but that could well change before the window closes.
I would also still maintain that Dembele as been unfazed by the chat going on around him. To be fair, that has been a constant since his very early months at Celtic because of his performances and I think his temperament is such that his head is not turned by it.
To me his big issue this season was doing his hamstring when he had just come back from the same injury. Psychologically I think that can have an impact as well as the obvious physical impact.
It clearly left Dembele playing catch-up in terms of match fitness and you are never going to hit your best streak if you are not fully up to speed.