Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers gave some insight in to defensive squad planning on Saturday.
Rodgers was quizzed about the club’s centre-back options after he confirmed that Carl Starfelt was set to leave the club.
At that stage, reports about Gustaf Lagerbielke had not yet broken, but the Celtic manager would have been well aware of the Swede as he revealed the club would be looking to strengthen.
“We would need to get another centre half,” he told the media at his post-match press conference. (The Scotsman)
“The whole idea was to have four that could be competitive, and if Carl was to go, we would bring in another one.”
So Rodgers wants four “competitive” centre-backs. If we assume that Cameron Carter-Vickers, Maik Nawrocki and Gustaf Lagerbielke (should he sign) are three of them, who is the fourth?
Is it Yuki Kobayashi? Stephen Welsh? Liam Scales? All three have pretty big question marks over their futures at present.
Intriguingly, Celtic were also linked with the Dutch youngster Xavier Mbuyamba again on Tuesday. The Volendam man was mentioned alongside Lagerbielke. So is it a case of one or the other? Or could we see both come in to complete Rodgers’ desired four.
On the face of it, neither player are likely to cost too much money for us. Our bid for Lagerbielke is said to be around £3million (Expressen) while Mbuyamba would probably cost similar.
Signing three centre-backs in one summer may seem a little unlikely, but is it really that much of a bad idea?
We play over 50 matches per season. With injuries, suspensions and more, there would be more than enough game time to go around.
In other news, Celtic are considering letting Kobayashi go out on loan this summer
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