The four players Celtic must sell for rebuild to truly begin

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In order for the Celtic rebuild to begin, the first stage must be to get rid of all in-demand stars who want to leave.

A host of our top stars haven’t committed to new contracts. Odsonne Edouard, Kristoffer Ajer, and Ryan Christie’s deals are up in 2022. Neither man has shown any further commitment to the club and appear destined for the exit door this summer.

The same goes for Olivier Ntcham, who has in the past discussed his own unhappiness with Scottish football [The Herald]. His contract is also up in the summer of 2022 and is clearly itching for a new challenge.

These are players who simply shouldn’t be near the Champions League qualifiers. Not if they’re in demand and looking for moves away from the club over the course of the summer window.

In addition to that, it’s not inconceivable that Celtic manage to rake in just under the £20million mark for all of them if we play our cards right. Getting deals done early for all of these players would give us a massive leg-up for the rebuild. Until these deals are done, we won’t have as much to spend in order to bring the appropriate level of talent to the football club.

Celtic rebuild will partly be built via wantaway player cash

Much of Celtic’s money this summer will come from season-ticket sales as they always do. However, fans have until June 25th to renew. In other words, their money from season-tickets will be coming in all summer.

Ensuring we get the four players mentioned off the books early, it could allow us to have plenty of cash to play with before the UCL qualifiers. Therefore, it gives us plenty of time to get some of key priority targets in before the Champions League qualifiers.

Who would you honestly rather have playing for us in Euro qualifiers? A group of hungry new players itching to make their mark, or last season’s underperformers who will likely be more concerned about their next move.

Getting these players off the wage bill and some much-needed transfer cash into the club is a necessity for this rebuild to truly start taking shape. If we stall further then not only might we struggle to get the players we want in the door, but we’ll go into the Euro games with players we just can’t trust.

Of course, you need buyers for this to happen. And we need them to be quick about their transfer work too. But don’t tell me we can’t find clubs interested in all four of the stars mentioned. There will be clubs queuing up and sniffing a potential bargain.

The first thing you do when rebuilding a squad is clear out some of the deadwood or figures who don’t want to be there. That should be Celtic’s immediate goal with Edouard, Ajer, Christie, and Ntcham. Failure to do so and the squad could look messy come the first qualifier.

In other news, we look at the near-impossible task Eddie Howe can’t be demanded to achieve.