READ STEPHEN McGOWAN’S COLUMN
DEMBELE’S MOVE SUMS UP TRANSFER FIASCOS
GLASGOW’S nightlife was once illuminated by a club in the West End of the city called Cleopatra’s. No-one called it that, of course. It was known simply as Clatty Pats. And the name was never intended as a compliment.
The carpets were sticky, the music cheesy, the lighting dark. And every night, around 1.45am young men would begin circling the place like sharks round surfers.
Some — the handsome, the car owners, the characters with teeth — had no need. They had made their move early. They were long gone. Some had landed the woman of their dreams on a short-term contract and sneaked off into the night to conduct the medical.
Their pals were left behind to look for a loan deal. Lapping the dance floor in a desperate search for talent.
And it was desperate. Almost as grim as the final days and hours of the transfer window for Celtic. A window when Brendan Rodgers aroused internal tensions by accusing the club of failing to get deals done.
A window when Celtic fan John McGinn turned his back on an offer from his boyhood team to join Aston Villa instead.
A window when right-back target Cristiano Piccini finished up at Valencia.
Dedryck Boyata threw the toys out the pram after a £9million move to Fulham was turned down.
A £3.5m bid for Aberdeen’s Scott McKenna was kicked into touch.
Olivier Ntcham’s agents moved heaven and earth to try to get the midfielder to Porto for £14m.
Louis Moult briefly threatened to become a signing target.
And Youssouf Mulumbu, a fine player who has not kicked a ball since leaving Kilmarnock in May, was wheeled out as an offering to irate fans on the final day when they could have signed him months ago.
And then came the pièce de rèsistance.
With hours of the window to go, Moussa Dembele was pursuing a social media fatwah against the first-team manager in a desperate quest to force his last-minute move to Lyon.
There may be nothing which sums up Celtic’s transfer window better than the fact that, by 8pm last night, people still had no idea if the star striker was coming or going.
It’s easy to forget amidst all of this that Celtic play Rangers tomorrow. Dembele — for so long a talisman in the fixture — won’t be there.
And suddenly, an away win feels nowhere near as improbable as it did just four weeks ago.
Rangers are taking heart from a series of self-inflicted mis-steps across the city.
Yet the blame for the Dembele saga, and many of the others, cannot be laid solely at the door of directors.
There is a deeper malaise at Celtic now. The failings are collective, exacerbated by acts of self-preservation at the expense of the greater good.
Given the choice, the men in grey suits must surely have seen that it made no sense to even attempt to hold on to an unhappy striker when Lyon were offering a deal worth £20m to sign him. He should have gone when contact was made last weekend.
Just as they must have seen that turning down £9m from Fulham for Boyata was simply asking for trouble.
Rodgers thought differently, of course. The two sides do on a few things these days.
Yet Celtic’s transfer model has always been based on a simple principle. Buy cheap, sell big and have the next one lined up.
And this was a window which exposed the malfunctioning of Celtic’s player recruitment line since Lee Congerton’s arrival.
The job of a club’s scouting network is to prepare for every scenario. To provide a list of attractive, attainable replacements within a budget the chief executive will agree to.
Transfers are never a perfect science. Things can and do go wrong — often at the last minute.
But is it really so wrong to feel Congerton should have had a list of attainable players lined up weeks ago to replace Boyata and Dembele?
And if he didn’t, how, exactly, does he earn his cash?
From a seemingly unassailable position, Celtic suddenly look unsure of themselves. Their recruitment has been reactive rather than proactive.
A pet hate of this football writing game is the man-by-man ratings. The marks out of ten which cause more grief and hassle than any other task in sports journalism.
In truth, it would be easier just to mark players as fives and sixes to avoid angry phone calls and emails. But there can be no sugar-coating this transfer window for Celtic.
The additions of Mulumbu and Filip Benkovic do nothing to lift it beyond a two out of ten. At best!