02 Jan 2019 07:34:09
I hear a lit of you guy's saying you want statement signings and signings that will walk straight in and improve the team, I'm just wondering though if that is even possible for Celtic these day's?

Do really good international or calibre of player BR want's want to come to Scotland?

If we manage to persuade them to come here for 25/ 30k a week?

Probably the answer to both questions is it would be extremely difficult to find any, so this then begs the question.
Bearing in mind our club has a wage bill of 60million which in my opinion for a club from Scotland is astronomical, is it realistic to expect more from the club than it is already doing?

💚🍀HH.


1.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 09:10:31
Part of the issue for me is that our signing policy is to get in young players and develop them to then sell them on, problem is they don't develop any further at celtic, the money we pay is too good so we can't then sell them if they don't make it so we end up with a huge squad if players.

I suspect the 2 strikers weah and bayo will again fall into this category. So in some ways it's counter productive.

If we can run with 50+mill wage then surely trimming this squad down and combine the wage of 4 squad no marks to get solid signings is possible.

We have 3 players in current squad who can play left back yet played calmac thereast game. So really that's £10k a week for Hayes and izzy that brendan doesn't rate good enough as even cover.

There inie the problem for me, selling first team player and spending the money on squad padding.

£13mill would've got benko and he'd have come but we'd rather spend that type of cash on 3 or 4 young players in the hope we might get a can dyke. We are now seeing the downside of that policy.


2.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 09:17:00
Excellent post Royjac73. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I think the best a club like Celtic can expect these days is to pick up young guys like Ntcham and Edouard and try and hold on to them as long as possible. If Celtic and others in the league continue to improve, the overall quality of player coming to Scotland may improve but probably not significantly.


3.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 09:19:10
For me mate it’s a must. Totally get the massive wage bill and that needs addressed. As I said in an earlier post, for me that’s why we need to get the deadwood out the door ( easier said than done I know) but it must happen. For far too long we’ve had guys sitting there on good money and for one reason or another not produced consistently for us. de vries, hendry, gamboa, Compper, Hayes, Allan, benyu, mulumbu,
Kouassi. then there’s guys like lustig (contracts up in the summer) , brown ( contracts up in the summer) , boyata ( contracts up in the summer) , jozo ( don’t think brendan fancies him when boyata and benkovic are fit) , Izzy ( brought back to cover Tierney, Brendan couldn’t trust him at Ibrox) bitton ( just back or coming back from a year out) . Im not for one second suggesting every player mentioned must / should go but when u look at that list, there’s some money in wages I’d say that could be pulled back in by getting some out the door, especially the ones that don’t or haven’t contributed in years, because make no mistake, double treble winners or not the team needs to evolve and freshen up in certain areas like all good winning teams do. We can’t just keep accumulating players.


4.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 09:52:38
I think another problem though with offloading players is obviously the wages we are paying them, take Scott Allen for instance who was on say 1.5k a week at hibs and we buy him and now probably on 7.5k a week at us. So if you were him would you go back to hibs for 1.5k or sit out your contract to maximise your wage? I know what I would do, this is probably the reason we aren't seeing many guy's getting offloaded as they probably just refusing to go. Big Marvin Commper has basically said as much already.
I think it is probably a good thing so many players are out of contract in the summer, I wouldn't renew any of their contracts and include Broonie in this also unless he is prepared to accept he won't play too much with a view to go into coaching. In fact I would probably say to him go and learn your coaching somewhere else and maybe come back in the future.


5.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 09:55:49
Think of this as well as it is actually really crazy. French Eddy our record signing of 9million breaking our transfer record by millions was a youth player at another club!


6.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 10:00:07
Agreed Royjac I came to the same conclusion due to recent failures and struggles in the transfer market. In effect even if Celtic have considerably more financial resources than other teams in SPL if they financial resources aren’t sufficient to attract top players then in reality we have very little financial advantage. Our business model should for me be based on (1) developing our own players and (2) scouting the best players available who want to come for 3 or 4 years to put themselves in the shop window for EPL and move them on at a profit when the time comes given our friends south of the border have no shortage of cash. We accept we are a window to the EPL and embrace the benefits of that rather than bemoan the fact. I question though whether our worldwide scouting capability is currently as good as it could be or was previously to implement this business model to best effect.


7.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 10:21:39
Spot on JFP1888. It all comes back to the scouting system. Some of our buys these past few years have been very poor. There’s a whole world out there, we never paid excessive millions for the VVD’s, wanyamas, dembeles etc of this world. There’s real good gems out there just waiting to be discovered. What we need is to have a right good look at the current setup and staff in there and see if or where it can be improved so we can get the best young talent we can possibly find and bring to the club if that’s the route we’re continually going to go down.


8.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 10:54:40
Good post royjac73. Unfortunately a major bargining chip for us to attract the type of player we need to take us to the next level is Champions League football and we need to overcome 4 qualifiers before we can offer that.

The powers that be are doing a fantastic job in terms of keeping us on a sound financial position even if we fail to progress from the qualifiers and a lot of this down to our transfer policy which I posted on here the other day is a massive credit to the club.

Can we expect more from the club? Look I think we should all be grateful and take comfort in the fact that we have the best possible people at the helm who will make every decision they make based on the best interests of the club.

One a seperate note I saw a tweet last night regarding renaming the North Stand, I think " The Fergus McCann Stand" would be a fair shout👍.


9.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 11:12:39
Garry, you say our scouting has been poor in the past few years and then you mention Dembele. He was in the past few years and we sold him for our record outgoing fee. Sorry but the two don’t add up. We also had interest in Ntcham’s and Boyata in the last transfer window and if the reports are accurate, we’d have made massive profits on both.


10.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 11:13:29
Gary, agreed I think the scouting system is where we’re failing. Am I correct in saying that the guy that scouted VVD and Wanyama et al is away and our failures have been attributable to the current Head of Recruitment Lee Congerton who I asssume Brendan Rodgers brought?


11.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 11:15:18
I totally agree with you guy's about the scouting network and staff.

I do also think the board and CEO do a great job of trying to keep us on the map in what must be extremely difficult for them to do so, haha I remember saying something similar in the summer and being called a spy and a sympathizer lol

Yea they will make mistakes and yea they will get some right, at the end of the day I'll always love the hoops no matter what. A club like no other 💚🍀 HH.


12.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 11:21:16
We’re not seeing the downside of it Kmax. A lot of posters on here concentrate on guys like Compper and Benyu because it suits their agenda. What about Dembele, who we bought for half a mil and sold for nearly 20 mil, N’tcham, who we bought for 4.5 mil and had interest at allegedly 14 mil, Boyata, who we bought for about 2 mil. I think Fulham we’re talking about 10 mil and others possibly higher.


13.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 12:45:18
Coybig

Dembele was scouted long before Brendan and Congerton got involved with Celtic. Boyata was already at Celtic and Ntcham on recent performances will never leave for 14 million.

Brendan and Congerton have been a disaster in the transfer market. No one is mentioning his bad signings to suit there agenda. They get mentioned because it's a FACT .


14.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 13:06:12
COYBIG, yes your correct to point out dembele, and like another post mentioned ntcham, then boyata. The point I was trying to make that for every dembele, ntcham etc there has been some really poor buys aswell, there is no getting away from that. As for boyata, ( who has done extremely well in most parts since his wee huff) if you’d asked any/ most fans prior to that bid from Fulham if we’d get £9 million for him most I believe would laugh in our face, and I stand by what I said at the time and it was a poor poor decision to knock back that money for a player that now can effectively walk away for nothing. I might be wrong here aswell COYBIG but was boyata not brought in during the John Park era and before Lee converting got brought in? It’s irrelevant anyway mate, all I’m saying is we’ve accumulated a huge squad with some that really don’t deserve to be there and it’s now our job to try get them out and bring in better. Easier said than done but it needs to happen.


15.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 16:01:25
Ok, it’s a fair point that Boyata and Dembele were probably brought in on Park’s recommendation, you could possibly argue that it’s too early to judge Congerton’s performance as we haven’t moved many of his on yet. I know, the ones that aren’t playing are unlikely to show much profit unless they show significant improvements and break into the team. However, Edouard, Ntcham, Sinclair and Benkovic have all been good signings and although Ntcham’s form has dipped, he had been very good previously and his value has increased. If BR had sold Boyata, I’m fairly confident he’d have been slaughtered on here for it. He’s made a significant contribution this season and has shown that we won’t be dictated to by huffy players, the Dembele situation was unretrievable. We have a lot of squad players but we need them. A lot of them might be first team players for Celtic in another era but these guys are winning every domestic trophy put in front of them so it’s hard to get into this team. We’d all like to buy players that are better than the ones currently on the Park but that is very difficult and costly. I’d say you can only realistically expect to see one or two that come into that category in any transfer window.


16.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 17:00:54
No one is saying it’s easy to bring quality into a team that’s won the double treble but that’s down to the powers that be to do just that. We must always be looking to improve from a position of strength as all good quality teams do, granted most teams in European football are on different levels, different budgets but the principal must surely be the same. we as fans are not privy to the behind scene going ons, but the boyata and dembele situations were strange. Dembele was always going sooner rather than later it was common knowledge so to leave it right down to the last few hours without a replacement was criminal ( and I know we may have had a very unhappy player on our hands) but top teams across Europe don’t sell they’re best assets without replacements. Secondly boyata, again if he made it clear he wanted to go we surely must have a list of possible replacements? £9 million for him for me, was criminal to knock back. Only my opinion but no way was he ever worthy of a fee that high.


17.) 02 Jan 2019
02 Jan 2019 23:37:40
I’d have been more than happy to get 9mil for Boyata but we didn’t have a replacement and I’m quite sure we’d have been looking. Is he worth 9 mil? He’s playing for the number 1 ranked nation in the world, so maybe. I believe we are probably looking for replacements for every single player in the team because any of them could leave or suffer career ending injuries at any time.

It’s a difficult job because very few will be found that tick all the boxes and would want to come. I don’t know what happened with Dembele but I don’t think anyone at Celtic saw it coming.


18.) 03 Jan 2019
03 Jan 2019 09:47:00
The dembele one I feel was inevitable. If you remember back to his time with us, as soon as he scored that hatrick against rangers he was instantly linked with all numbers of clubs and it was well documented that after a season or 2 he would move on. That being the case we should’ve had players scouted and I’m talking players that were achievable in getting. I’m not for a second having a go at brendan or Celtic for letting him leave as the way he reportedly conducted himself at the end was out of order but brendan has always maintained he wants 3 strikers at the club and that along with the griffiths situation has left us in a pickle.