Champions League opener shines a light on recruitment deficiencies

Well, that’s the Champions League started.

The game against Feyenoord was one that I just wanted to compete in and to see where it took us. We did ok for 46 minutes before having 15 minutes of madness that turned the game.

The football went against us but that’s what will happen on most occasions when you ask boys to do men’s jobs.

There were positives. This was the highest and most intense level game we have played this season and we coped with it well enough. The Dutch seemed sharper in mind and body than us. Our play was loose at times because of this. We would have tired with 11 men never mind nine. I can only imagine Lazio and Atletico will be even sharper. They play in better leagues than Feyenoord. We just need to hope that our training is at a Champions League level of intensity, as our domestic game isn’t.

And here lies the problem.

There is no point having our turnover and £72m nest egg in the bank when we play in Scotland if all we want to do is spend it on player transfers. It’s like having the biggest and best caravan in a row of caravans perched on an eroding cliff edge. Our caravan will still topple into the sea like the rest of them. Size and beauty makes no difference, nature will see to that.

The question last week was whether Brendan Rodgers had been backed for Europe. He hasn’t, and never will, because we haven’t spent £200m on a squad overhaul with the box-ready players in the prime of their career years.

This summer, those who believed we are a rolling news, Sky Sports, Fantasy League, Football Manager, FIFA pro-mode football club and not playing in Scotland dreamt of breaking transfer records like plates at a Greek wedding.

It was a fanciful notion.

Around a year ago now, the reason the club brought in a head of scouting and recruitment, who they thought was the best person for the job and whose surname happened to be Lawwell, was so we never have to scale French Eddy transfer fee heights again. We then brought in a manager who is excited by this development and has said he is here to develop the players the club gives him.

That next level player has the choice of top leagues, not Kilmarnock away.

 

We get a certain level of player and that won’t change. This means that we go into the Champions League with many long-odds gambles and the hope that our manager can come up with game plans to make us competitive in what will always be a tough group with teams from better leagues.

This is why the manager should always be the most important, experienced and highest paid at the club.

This is why we need to be a Champions League club off the pitch in facilities, science, fitness, scouting and data. We have the money to ensure those areas are the best they can be.

But you’ve got to back yourself, because if you don’t no-one else will.

I’m hoping those long-odds gambles become short-odds favourites. I’m hoping we become more than the sum of our parts in the toughest games we face every season. But if it doesn’t then it’s a learning curve.

JAMES MCKENZIE // Follow James HERE