Brendan Rodgers addresses lack of Celtic transfer activity and USA tour timeline for signings

Add as preferred source on Google

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers says his squad needs to be improved over the coming weeks to face the challenges of the upcoming season.

The Bhoys are yet to make a single signing despite losing several key players at the end of last season. Joe Hart retired while both Adam Idah and Paulo Bernardo returned to their parent clubs.

The club have been linked with over 20 goalkeepers and there has been significant reporting on pursuits for permanent Idah and Bernardo deals. But the wait goes on for the support.

Last week, Rodgers indicated he wanted players in the door in time for next week’s trip to the United States. However, there is no indication anything is imminent.

After beating Queen’s Park on Wednesday night, the manager addressed that timeline and the lack of transfer activity in general.

Brendan Rodgers on Celtic summer transfers

The manager said [Herald Sport, 12/07 print edition, page 6]: “It’s nat­ural to ask the new sign­ings ques­tion. Abso­lutely. We’re a club that needs to improve. We need to improve the squad. So I really hope that we can do that. I men­tioned before, about get­ting at least a couple in before we go to Amer­ica.

“That’s still the idea. I know there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes. We’ve had play­ers tar­geted for a while. It’s still bub­bling away but it’s never easy.

“I’m hop­ing then that we can get some in but we all know that we lost three play­ers – Joe Hart, Adam Idah and Paulo Bern­ardo – and, you know, they were very import­ant play­ers for us.

“So that there alone demon­strates that we need to make that right and we also have to improve. I’m con­fid­ent we’ll be able to do that. It’s just that it’s never easy.

“There are sev­eral play­ers that we are look­ing at. Hope­fully, we can do the deals that bring them back and we can improve the squad over­all. There are cer­tainly pos­i­tions that we always have wanted to strengthen and I’m hope­ful that we can do that.”

Celtic can’t let this be an underwhelming summer

The Bhoys may have won a double last term but the season as a whole showed that this squad is in strong need of fresh talent.

Injuries exposed a lack of squad depth while there were patches of inconsistency that suggested a higher-quality of player was needed in several positions.

Standing still, or even regressing, would be a serious error and that’s why fans are so keen on transfers getting over the line early.

There’s still plenty of time left in the summer but with Rodgers even indicating it’s natural to be asking questions, criticism won’t be far away if movement doesn’t start to happen soon.