With Celtic now trailing in the title race for the first time in 18 months, the full focus of how it all has gone wrong has been placed firmly on the club’s transfer policy.
Losing top first-team players like Jota and Carl Starfelt, and even Aaron Mooy to retirement, was a major blow for Brendan Rodgers.
But where Celtic have failed is how they have recruited to replace three stars who were pivotal in the treble-winning season.
Luis Palma was brought in to replace the Portuguese, Odin Thiago Holm and Hyeokkyu Kwon were added for Mooy and Gustaf Lagerbielke and Maik Nowrocki were purchased to the tune of almost £8m to take the place of Carl Starfelt.
All players with a combined transfer total of around £11m. Out of that list only one, Palma, has contributed anything of note, all the rest can be regarded as failures due to the lack of gametime under Rodgers.
However, for all the cash laid out in the summer, Rodgers has had plenty of cash to spend. But according to Keith Jackson, it’s not getting spent the way the Celtic manager wants.
Jackson said [Record Celtic podcast], “If you ask Brendan Rodgers himself he would say the same thing. He would far rather, instead of spending £20m on seven players, spend £15m on three of four.
“That’s the argument that he would make if he was sitting on this podcast right now. He would completely agree with that and I know that to be the case.”
Celtic fans’ frustrations in the transfer market
This has been a huge bugbear for the Celtic fans over recent years. Apart from the Ange Postecoglou era, there has been millions of pounds wasted on players who are clearly not good enough to wear the green and white hoops.
We can all hark back to players like Ismaila Soro, Kundai Benyu and Boli Bolingoli. Even Ange Postecoglou had a couple of nightmares with James McCarthy, Yosuke Ideguchi and Sead Haksabanovic.
And whilst spending big doesn’t always guarantee that a player will be a success (remember Albian Ajeti?) it does give you a better chance of adding more quality and improving the first team.
Instead of spending that £11m in the summer on five players, would it not have made more sense to spend it on two? Even in terms of salary paying two good players a decent wage instead of five would make much more sense.
However, we are where we are and it seems like unless there is a huge shake-up in the recruitment department soon, the summer transfer window is destined to be another Groundhog Day for the Celtic supporters.
In other news, Brendan Rodgers shares what he told the Celtic players immediately after dropping points to Kilmarnock
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