As Celtic continue to desperately source defenders for their upcoming UEFA Champions League battle with Midtjylland, we’re now starting to feel the full impact of being beaten to Ben Davies by Liverpool.
There’s an absolute urgency for Celtic to bring in defensive reinforcements within the next 14 days. We have until July 15th to register our squad to face the Danish side, with some real noticeable squad shortages.
The area most in need of recruitment is the centre-back positions. Shane Duffy is away back to Brighton whilst Chris Jullien is still injured. Kris Ajer could be away at some stage too leaving us with only Stephen Welsh and Nir Bitton as the two we can definitely rely upon.
Sure, Celtic can refuse to sell Ajer for now and easily place him in against Midtjylland. But that still wouldn’t halt the fact that we’re still relying on a youngster who isn’t yet good enough for European football in Welsh or a makeshift centre-back in Bitton.
But this could all have been solved had we simply managed to move earlier for Ben Davies back in January.
Celtic losing Ben Davies race to Liverpool summed up 2020/21
It had been reported towards the end of January that target Davies, then with Preston, had signed a pre-contract with Celtic. The Hoops fans had all assumed that we were working to get him in immediately instead of waiting until the end of the campaign.
What happened next was incredible. As it turned out, nothing had been signed. Out of nowhere came Liverpool on deadline-day, and Davies was off in a shot to the English Premier League.
It’s even more painful knowing the ball-playing centre-back hasn’t made a single appearance for the Merseyside outfit. He remains an outcast yet Liverpool remain determined to keep him. And what was Neil Lennon’s excuse for the embarrassment? That we were simply “gazumped” [Sky Sports].
In other words, we left our business far too late in January and missed out on an exciting long-term centre-back solution. Now we fast forward five months and we could’ve had a settled pairing of Ajer and Davies ready for Midtjylland. Instead, we’re panicking trying to bring a centre-back or two in because our resources are sparse.
This could’ve been a much more relaxing period had we simply looked to deal with Preston in early January. It’s another example of leaving things to the last minute and having no time to come up with a backup plan. Now, we’re feeling the full effect of it as we face the very real prospect of centre-back shortages in the Champions League.
Hopefully, new CEO Dom McKay learns from these failures and improves our way of working in the future. It’s time to stop the transfer mistakes that end up causing us months of regret.
In other news, Chris Sutton provides his honest verdict on John Kennedy and Gavin Strachan.
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