Board must share blame for failure in qualifying
NEIL Lennon reiterated in the aftermath of Celtic’s dire defeat to CFR Cluj at Parkhead last night that he remained determined to strengthen his squad with new players before the transfer window closes at the end of this month.
Using some the £25 million received from Arsenal for Kieran Tierney last week to bring in a new left-back, another right-back and possibly a striker will go some way towards placating seething supporters after their Champions League exit.
Perhaps the most important signing the Scottish champions could make is a Director of Football or a permanent Head of Recruitment.
Many reasons have been put forward for Celtic’s painful and costly failure to reach the group stages of Europe’s premier club competition for the second consecutive season and the fourth time in six years.
Lennon’s decision to play midfielder Callum McGregor out of position at left-back was one. Being too gung ho defensively and leaving themselves exposed at the back was another. The manager himself felt his charges’ lack of ruthlessness up front cost them, and with good reason.
Yet, major shareholder Dermot Desmond, chief executive Peter Lawwell and their fellow directors must shoulder their share of responsibility.
Poor recruitment, specifically their inability to bring in an adequate replacement for Tierney early enough for him to bed into the side, is ultimately what is to blame for this embarrassing setback.
Yes, Lennon was wrong to move McGregor to left-back. The Scotland internationalist looked uncomfortable and the entire team failed to function as effectively without their talisman in the centre of the park.
But what alternative did Lennon have? Boli Bolingoli had been woeful in the first leg in Romania six days earlier and had gifted ordinary opponents a goal against the run of play. He had no other options, no other specialist left-backs, in his squad.
That is an incredible position for a club like Celtic to be in going into a fixture of such massive importance.
Bolingoli, a £3.5m acquisition from Rapid Vienna last month, may recover from a difficult start to his time in Scotland and justify the outlay. He has certainly fared far better against St Johnstone and Motherwell. But there is already a strong suspicion the Belgian is not up to the task.
The business Celtic have conducted in the last five transfer windows under former head of recruitment Lee Congerton and his part-time replacement Nicky Hammond hardly fills supporters with confidence.
Olivier Ntcham, Odsonne Edouard, Scott Bain and, to an extent, Jonny Hayes have all proved good buys during that period. Filip Benkovic excelled during his loan spell. But the less said about Kundai Benyu, Marvin Compper, Jack Hendry, Emilio Izaguirre, Youssouf Mulumbu, Charly Musonda and Jeremy Toljan the better. How will Bolingoli, Hatem Elhamed and Christopher Jullien do going forward? The jury is out.
Congerton left in May to join Rodgers at Leicester City.
It was far from ideal that Hammond, former director of football at Reading and technical director at West Brom, was only brought in to replace Congerton in June.
It was suggested it was a knee-jerk appointment, a stop-gap measure.
Both left-back Bolingoli and centrehalf Jullien, a £7m capture from Toulouse in June, sat out the Cluj match and the makeshift defence that started the third-round qualifier looked disjointed and shipped four goals at home. It was a highly unsatisfactory and avoidable state of affairs.
Celtic have had many triumphs in the transfer market and on the field of play in the past decade, and made profits as a result of both. But domestic and European successes and multi-millionpound sales of Victor Wanyama, Virgil van Dijk and Moussa Dembele have been down to a proven recruitment team headed up by John Park.
They must invest in the structure of the club, not just splash money haphazardly on new players who aren’t of the requisite quality, and appoint Hammond or another candidate on a full-time basis to a Director of Football role if they are to continue to dominate in Scotland and fare well in Europe.
Their last annual results showed they had £2m in the bank and their revenue had exceeded £100m. Since then they have offloaded Dembele to Lyon for £20m as well as Tierney to Arsenal to £25m. So they aren’t exactly short of the money needed.
Celtic have excelled at identifying young players who can be bought for an affordable price and whose raw talent can then be developed. Will Kristoffer Ajer, Ntcham or Marian Shved go for big bucks in the seasons to come? Don’t bet against it.
But having a first team good enough to make it through to the Champions League group stages, something that will bank them in excess of £30m, has to be their priority.
Relations between Lawwell and Rodgers deteriorated towards the end of the latter’s tenure due to disagreements over recruitment.
Lennon is likely to be more accepting of the restrictions on spending than his compatriot. But he must be firm, too, to avoid further humiliations. Keeping his job will depend on it. ANDY Walker was transported back 30 years on Tuesday evening as he watched Celtic twice surrender a lead before losing 4-3 to CFR Cluj, ending their hopes of Champions League football for a second successive season.
In 1989 he was the other goalscorer for Billy McNeill’s side on the night Dariusz Dziekanowski claimed four in a 5-4 European Cup-Winners’ Cup victory over Partizan Belgrade, a result that eliminated them n the away-goals rule.
Celtic conceded a last-minute goal on that occasion due to their determination to score a sixth goal. And Walker attributes that to inexperience.
Neil Lennon’s men have no such excuse. Scott Brown, James Forrest, Callum McGregor, Leigh Griffiths, Jozo Simunovic, Olivier Ntcham, Odsonne Edouard and Kristoffer Ajer have racked up a total of 405 appearances in continental competition.
Walker believes manager Neil Lennon and chief executive Peter Lawwell must share the blame for the club’s failure to mix it with the big boys – and if they don’t prevail against either AIK Stockholm or Sherriff Tiraspol in the Europa League campaign then it will be only the second time in 14 seasons that Celtic will not have reached the group phase of either tournament.
“On the football side, Neil must