A bad January window and Lee Congerton must go

By David Walton

November 20, 2018

The one Celtic man who should be fearing for his Celtic future isn’t even a player, it’s Lee Congerton.

The Head of Recruitment has arguably been one of Brendan Rodgers’ worst signings at Celtic. A dreadful summer transfer window saw the club fail to strengthen substantially.

To add insult to injury, the Hoops were being linked with players supporters were strongly against. Names such as Scott McKenna didn’t inspire hope in the Celtic faithful.

Lee Congerton (second from the left), has failed to identify much at Parkhead (Ian Horrocks – Sunderland AFC/Getty Images)

Fortunately for Celtic, Aberdeen rebuffed their approach. The same could be said of Motherwell’s Trevor Carson last season. But attentions quickly turned to Congerton and his role as Celtic’s Head of Recruitment.

Given the failure of the club in recent windows, you have to wonder what it is that Congerton does. We all know it isn’t his role to negotiate with players, that falls on Peter Lawwell.

At face value, it’s Congerton’s job to identify talent for Rodgers to mull over. The manager will then decide who he wants and it’s therefore down to Lawwell to get the deal done.

Blame also on Lawwell

Given that Celtic didn’t strengthen in the summer, a lot of that blame can go towards Lawwell. Penny-pinching over John McGinn and McKenna meant that Rodgers didn’t get the players he was after in the summer.

Yet, all the while, what has Congerton truly done? Who has he identified that’s been of any value to the club? Marvin Compper was on his head, for example, and that’s one of the worst deals in the history of the club.

Scotland international Scott McKenna stayed at Aberdeen (Alan Rennie/Action Plus via Getty Images)

The Head of Recruitment has been lucky in the sense that Celtic have gotten their act together domestically. He’s fortunate the likes of Ryan Christie, Odsonne Edouard, and Tom Rogic have been in sensational form. If they hadn’t, more questions would’ve been getting asked of him.

Attentions simply must be on him over January, however. He must have a plethora of potential targets available to put forward to Rodgers. Absolutely none of those should be coming from Scotland either. He gets paid far too big a wage to pluck out a player from Aberdeen or Dundee, whom the rest of us know to not be good enough regardless.

If Celtic come out of the January window with less talent than they had when they went in, Congerton’s time has to be up. That doesn’t just mean having players signed up, it means having good players signed up that work out.

At the moment, it feels like the Hoops scout isn’t doing very much. If that perception remains the same after the Winter, Rodgers has to let him go.