It’s a question of ambition... and the Celtic board aren’t coming up with right answers
IF Tuesday’s defeat to Cluj doesn’t make Celtic sit up and take stock of how they are operating as a football club, then nothing ever will.
To lose once to a side with a vastly-inferior budget in a Champions League qualifier is forgivable. For it to happen four times in six years points to a fundamentally flawed strategy. One that not even three straight Trebles can now hide.
Look at the players signed permanently in the past two or three seasons. How many have actually done all right?
Scott Sinclair, Moussa Dembele and Olivier Ntcham have been successes. But beyond that, I’m not so sure.
There have been far too many players like Eboue Kouassi, Youssouf Mulumbu and Kundai Benyu.
That’s just astonishing for a team who are trying to get to nine and ten in a row and regularly make the group stage of the Champions League.
In every sense, the recruitment process is sub-standard.
It was clear to everyone at the start of the year that Celtic were going to lose a large number of defenders this summer.
Yet that just wasn’t addressed. Even having signed Christopher Jullien, Boli Bolingoli and Hatem Abd Elhamed, they are still a number of bodies down.
Every year we hear that January is such an important window because the Champions League qualifiers come so early but the signings made in that month are normally always short-term fixes. Where’s the long-term planning?
The worrying thing is that it’s questionable if the money that has been spent so far has been put to good use.
Both Bolingoli and Jullien look to be well off the pace.
But had they been signed in January or were ready to come in at the start of pre-season training, they might well be up to speed by now.
The trouble is that you don’t get a settling-in period at Celtic.
Over the past five or six years, they have sold the likes of Virgil van Dijk, Victor Wanyama and Kieran Tierney for incredible sums of money.
But the business model has fallen down badly when it comes to replacing them.
Whether it’s Nicky Hammond or someone else, they are going to have someone who knows the English market inside out as well as in Europe and South America to try and get quality players in the door on a budget.
It’s hard to work out the reluctance to invest money that you already have in the bank.
Rest assured, if the boot was on the other foot and Rangers had significant cash reserves and were going for nine-in-a-row, they’d be spending £30million to £40m to get there.
Celtic’s reluctance to invest heavily up to this point has opened the door for their great rivals.
Chris Sutton is also right when he says they they’ve dilly-dallied in the transfer market.
You only have to look at the John McGinn saga — a player who was in Scotland, supports Celtic and was available for £3m but is now playing in the English Premier League. That came down to wasting time and being slack.
These days, it seems to take weeks and weeks to get players in the door.
Why the process now takes so long, only Peter Lawwell or Dermot Desmond could say.
Before you know it, there are more clubs interested, more money involved and it’s too expensive.
They are also too slow in offering current players new contracts.
Under Brendan Rodgers, it seemed well structured with big deals being signed by James Forrest, Tom Rogic, Tierney and Callum McGregor.
But the fact Dedryck Boyata was allowed to leave on a free transfer made no sense. A year previously they turned down a £9m offer from Fulham for him.
If you aren’t going to sell players like him, then give them a longterm contract which either means they’ll stay for three or four years or protect their price.
What’s the alternative? Spending £7m on Jullien? Wouldn’t it have been better giving Boyata an extra three or four thousand pounds a week?
When I played, Joe Ledley left Lennoxtown in tears. He didn’t want to go. Gary Hooper was another who would have stayed and wasn’t asking for the world. Georgios Samaras was another.
That’s what infuriated Neil Lennon in his first spell: an inability to keep hold of his best players. He accepted Fraser Forster and Wanyama going as they had ambitions of playing in England and would fetch big fees. But there were many others who would have gladly stayed.
It seems like lessons have not been learned. The banner in the corner of Celtic Park on Saturday questioning the ambition of the board sums up the mood at the moment.
There were supporters who didn’t want Lennon there in the first place. The performances over the past two games won’t have given the fans any great confidence.
Sure, every team can have an off day but they can’t afford any in the next two weeks.
Listen, they could be one game away from it all clicking.
But it won’t take too many lacklustre performances or a defeat to put the manager under even more pressure.