The transfer trap that Celtic have to avoid this January window

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With Celtic suffering so many injuries in recent weeks, you can understand why fans are antsy for the January transfer window to open.

It seems almost inevitable that Ange Postecoglou will bring in some J League talents he knows and loves. Daizen Maeda, Yosuke Ideguchi and Reo Hatate look odds-on to join the Bhoys. The manager’s even said when he’d like some new players in.

All fine and well, and there’s clearly a need to bring players to the club. But with obvious anxiety over the fitness of the squad, there’ll be calls for Celtic to bring in myriad new faces to adapt to Ange Postecoglou’s system.

That’s the last thing Celtic should do. Even in the current context, quality far exceeds quantity.

There’s precedent for Celtic getting a bit carried away around the January window. Think of 15-16, when Ronny Deila brought in Colin Kazim-Richards and Carlton Cole. In 17-18, Brendan Rodgers brought in Jack Hendry, Marvin Compper and Charly Musonda. The year after, Oliver Burke and Jeremy Toljan seemed sensible on paper but also screamed of panic.

Last season, Celtic sold Jeremie Frimpong without a plan in place. Jonjoe Kenny was rushed along, and the effects weren’t good.

The point is, we have a habit of bringing in players who don’t entirely fit the system, or short-term loan deals that leave us high and dry come the summer. That’s borne out of panic rather than long-term strategy. And it happens even to the best managers in the game.

Celtic will benefit from January transfer window but must stay cool

Composure is the name of the game here. With the pull that Celtic have, attracting talent to boost the ranks isn’t really an issue.

But it feels like, in recent years, the club have been looking for short-term solutions to longer-term problems. Or, they’ve added players for the sake of it, who would depreciate in value and move on having made no real impact. If you do that, you end up with a bloated squad, and tough decisions to make in the summer.

Instead, it’s got to be about adding quality who can compete with first-team players beyond this season, while fitting into Postecoglou’s longer-term aims at Celtic. From what we’ve seen so far, we should have utter faith in him to do just that.

That’s why what we’re hearing is so encouraging [Football Scotland]. We saw against Betis that there are still so many new or young players competing for places. Adding three J League players, fresh from their own league finishing, is a potentially smart move by Postecoglou.

Doing too much can upset the balance of a squad, push Academy talents further down the pecking order, and disrupt the good that the manager has done.

Certainly, there will be calls for Celtic to do a raft of transfer business this January window.

But we’ve seen it before; names for the sake of names is not the way forward.

Read more: Report suggests Celtic are in for a much quieter January; move for Jota still on Ange’s mind