It is now three days since we witnessed a weakened Celtic side struggling against our closest rivals, Rangers. The dust has settled. We are still champions. We still have a Scottish Cup final, and potential treble, to look forward to. The 3-0 defeat has not derailed any of our mid to long-term plans, but what did Ange learn from Celtic’s unexpected and slightly humbling defeat on Saturday?
We have been praising the squad depth of Celtic’s side for the best part of this season. Regardless of the challenge thrown at us, we always seemed to have plentiful options on the bench to call upon and complete the job. This led some of the ACSOM team to consider that we had two players for every position who could confidently fulfill Ange’s template. However, Saturday’s game proved that if you take three or four players out of the starting XI, we can start to lose our spark, our intensity, our ‘never stop’ mentality. And that could well feed into our summer recruitment plans.
This pre-season, we will inevitably see a lot of interest from England and further afield for several of our players. That, in itself, is a sign of how well we are doing. The vultures will circle, their pockets will be deep, but Celtic don’t need the money. If it was that simple then we could have kept a host of star players over the years.
It isn’t solely about the money, though, and if the lockdown season taught us anything it was to offload unhappy players before the rot sets in. Was this part of the reason we moved on Giorgos Giakoumakis and Josip Juranović midway through this campaign? This is a great strategy if their replacements are able to maintain the same standards, but as Oh Hyeon-gyu has already found out, it can take time to acclimatise to the levels and expectations of a club like Celtic.
It is a tough balance to strike – It is essential that we keep the harmony of the squad that Ange has worked so hard to build. If a player feels that he needs a ‘new challenge’ then it’s time to facilitate that move and make the maximum we can from them. But, at the same time, in order for Celtic to maintain their domestic dominance, whilst making progress in Europe, we’d ideally add more quality to the squad, rather than replace like-for-like.
EUROPEAN AMBITIONS
With such a rich European history, Celtic should always crave more success at that level. It is now 20 years since the club reached its third European final, and if a Scottish club can reach the Europa League final just 12 months ago, then why can’t Celtic match that achievement or even go one stage further?
The question is, does the club’s European ambitions match those of the supporters? If so, then that ambition must be reflected in Ange’s third season recruitment.
If we go as far back to Martin O’Neill’s time at the club (for it was he who took us to that UEFA Cup final in 2003), we initially shelled out the big bucks for players of the calibre of Chris Sutton, Alan Thompson, Neil Lennon, Joos Valgaeren, John Hartson and Bobo Balde during O’Neill’s first two campaigns. Compare these signings to the buys in seasons three and four (Magnus Hedman, Ulrik Laursen, Michael Gray on loan, and Stephen Pearson) then it is difficult to argue that O’Neill hadn’t been reigned in.
Similarly, under Brendan Rodgers we saw the board initially backing the manager with singings such as Moussa Dembele, Scott Sinclair, Olivier Ntcham, Paddy Roberts and Odsonne Edouard, but by the time that Rodgers was doing a moonlight flit out of Lennoxtown, Celtic had a plethora of loan signings including Daniel Arzani, Oliver Burke, Timo Weah and Jeremy Toljan to keep Youssouf Mulumbu, Vakoun Bayo and Marian Shved company.
Celtic’s recruitment has been different class since Ange Postecoglou arrived at the club, but the board cannot afford to become complacent, as they have done previously when we had strong squads and major success to build on. Ange has European ambitions, and he can achieve them at this football club, as long as our board share his ambitions. As we move into season three under Ange, the business we do in the next transfer window is vital.
BOBBY GORDON
Young bhoys such as Oh and Kobayashi have received some over the top comments since the weekend got to remember these are young bhoys who have had not much game so far they need time to bed in and a run of games I’ve no doubts they will come good and on transfers we need to buy quality for Europe this squad is ok domestically but we need 3 or 4 quality signings for Europe