No interest in a back and forth on this but this is nothing to do with Lawwell.
This is an agent trying to maximise wages for a player by pimping him to English clubs (like he did with Armstrong previously) and the player choosing that route over the Celtic offer.
Celtic’s wage bill is already high enough and can’t afford to go any higher. If 10k/12k a week isn’t enough for him then good luck to the chap elsewhere. No way Celtic should be paying him more. His agent has done his job in touting him to Norwich and wherever else and they’ll have their English tv money to pay him more.
We have other more pressing needs and I’m more interested in our efforts to sign a centre back and right back. And a net outflow of players is exactly what we need - we had far too many crap players on the books.
Who do you think authorised the embarrassing statement released on Twitter? Do you think the social media guy went on a solo run?
I’m not overly bothered on Turnbull any case but it reflects the absolute mess the club is in at the top management level right now, an absolute laughing stock.
The major issue is we’ve known for nearly two seasons we’ve needed a right back, we got a short term fix in January which didn’t work. Still nothing.
We should have had a couple of centre backs already signed up sealed and delivered by now, it should have been an absolute priority. Yet nothing, we go into the European qualifiers a shambles with a sham manager.
Absolutely this is the priority. But it’s difficult to get players to move to Celtic. It’s not as simple as just picking a couple of players and saying they should be signed. The vast majority of players who are good enough to play for Celtic will have no interest in playing there.
I don’t really agree with this. Our scouting network has gone to shit.
There are plenty of players out there in the lesser leagues that we should be looking to sign but the board won’t take a risk.
I’d rather us take a punt on the likes of Amido Balde and Bayo than bringing in some loanee from PSG or Man City to plug a gap. For all that we do complain about resources, we know the club has plenty of money, we know that the club has one of the best wage budgets in Europe outside the elite CL clubs so financially we can afford to compete with clubs like Sevilla, Sampdoria etc who have a great record at recruitment in recent seasons. We can offer European football, a doorstep to the big bucks in the EPL, the chance to win trophies.
The problem is Lawwell is completely risk averse at the minute, everything and anything to save a few bucks to avoid a risk.
The recruitment was awful in recent seasons but that seemed to be a pattern that follows Lee Congerton everywhere he goes.
The extended Arzani loan wasn’t a bad deal (though a strange one) and a pity it backfired. Weah didn’t serve much of a purpose but Edouard was a good loanee and allowed us a path to buying him even though he wasn’t cheap.
I don’t think there are (m)any players who would choose Celtic over Sevilla. It doesn’t matter what sort of wages we offer (and our wages will be linked to Champions League qualification because that’s a big variable in our income).
I do think we should be avoiding English based players at all costs (other than the cross-border out of contract players).
Looking at the team last year tells us where we should be getting players from:
2 of our back 4 came from Norway (and Johansen from there recently was a bit of a clown but probably a decent player overall)
Two more were from Croatia directly or indirectly. And then Boyata from England.
Midfield was largely Scottish other than one from England, Israel, Australia.
Attackers were homegrown or from England or France and a guy from Ukraine joining.
Not sure where I’m going with this but Croatia, Serbia and the likes and Scandinavia should be where we are trying to get players in from.
I don’t either but that’s not the point, financially we can compete with the likes of these teams - maybe we can’t offer them a high profile domestic league or a sunny climate but we can compete with the terms and there are a number of players in recent seasons that suggest Celtic can be an appealing stepping stone. The shambles of the last couple of seasons undo a lot of that appeal though.
The players are out there, look at Piatek last season - who had heard of him before? €4m, there’s no reason why we can’t sign a guy like that. Sampdoria have picked up the likes of Skriniar and Schick too for a couple of million. I don’t know what Shved will turn out to be like but these are the kind of guys we should be going for - loans are a waste of time unless they have an option to buy the guy outright. The lower leagues of France, Italy, Germany and Spain are ripe with quality players who can be picked up for very little - there’s lots of these guys playing in the English Championship now who would add a lot to Celtic and they are well within our budget.
There’s plenty of good players in the Dutch and Portuguese leagues that don’t play for the top clubs there that can offer a lot. We got stung a few years back with a couple of poor buys like Boerrigter, Scepovic, Balde that seemed to have made us shy, there’s always going to be signings like that for every Wanyama, Van Dijk, Dembele etc but Celtic have to start taking more risks in the market.
McGinn was unforgivable last year, Turnbull I’m not too annoyed with but the way the whole thing was managed was completely amateurish by Celtic and will certainly make a player think twice about joining now.
I wasn’t too excited by Lennon being confirmed on a permanent basis.
However, I would have been reassured if the club invested in some good players. That’s not happening at the moment.
I agree with @Rocko that many/most of the players who’ve left were squad filler and/or won’t be missed. Ignoring loanees returning to parent clubs, Boyata is probably the only player that we’ll miss. Lustig looks physically past it. You could tell though that he was well liked and respected by the entire squad judging by their reaction to his leaving - he was a good bridge between the jockos and the foreign players.
It’s also true there are young players (Henderson, Johnston, Dembele), returning players (Griffiths, Arzani) and a new player (Shved) to add to the mix.
But I also agree with @Cicero_Dandi that we should be much more proactive and professional in identifying and signing players. It’s not a great league or climate but good players go to worse and lower paid environments to prove themselves before getting a move to a big league. We need to seriously crack on with signing some decent players.