I think that will still be inadequate if Edouard leaves. The playing squad needs serious investment. We have currently have sold a number of players who could badly have done with last night. A couple of international centre halves, a winger and a striker could all have been useful to spring off the bench.
Look I know we can say Shved, Hendry and Bayo might not have been good enough but we have gone in here underprepared. We have a huge issue in goal and what are we doing? We are addressing it with a bombscare keeper on a freebie who has barely played in 3 seasons. That is not investment, that is addressing a problem position with the same penny pinching lazy mentality that we have become accustomed to.
Do you not think Hart is a seriously, seriously underwhelming option. He is a figure of ridicule.
We need a net investment of Ā£20m. What are we going to replace what Edouard has given us in the past few season for Ā£4m with?
My 4ms are for the others. As I said they donāt include replacing Edouard if he leaves. I think that probably needs more money.
I havenāt seen Hart play since before he joined Torino. Players can regain form. Gordon and Forster were fairly washed up before rediscovering themselves at Celtic. He wouldnāt be my ideal option but maybe he can be good enough and heāll have to try very very hard to be a downgrade on our current options.
I actually think a replacement for Soro is the most important signing. We can live with average full backs (not Kenny or Bolingoli or Ralston but actually average). But that Soro role is very important in an open style we are playing and heās too loose on and off the ball to play there I think. And I think McGregor is better a little further forward.
By the way that Everson lad they had was a lovely player. They had him on loan from Brazil and then bought him. Fairly risk free way to get him. And Onyedika was very good in both legs too despite not starting yesterday. He cost a pittance or nothing. We spent more on Kouassi or the likes than on the two of those lads combined. We need to be much better in our recruitment.
So a Ā£20m net spend would be a very fair assessment of what kind of investment we put into the squad right now? Anything short of that is embarrassing.
Iād agree on Soro, donāt think heās really suited to what Ange is looking for both I do think heās a useful player who will be suited for certain games.
I agree you can get great value out there but Joe Hart is not great value. Heās a dreadful goalkeeper and I donāt see him improving us.
I see West Ham have signed Areola from PSG. Surely Randolph would be a much better option, heāll likely be down to 3rd choice at West Hame.
I still think net spend isnāt as important as you think.
Take the midfield. We could add Mooy. He might not cost a lot in a fee but probably would in wages. But heād be a decent investment. That might be better than any 4m player we could get in.
But we absolutely need investment and we might need more than 20m if Edouard and Christie both leave.
I think it does matter. Edouard will need serious replacing. He has carried this team for a few years now.
This squad needs investment. The club have the money, they have a billionaire owner. Weāve taken in big fees over the past few years for important first team players and failed to reinvest it into the playing squad.
Of course spending wisely is important but that has little to do with how much money we invest. A bigger budget allows us to attract a higher quality of player. At the minute we are scraping around and cutting corners on the goalkeeping position when it needs serious addressing.
Back the manager and give him the funds to add quality additions rather than counting beans. This culture of penny pinching has cost us so much over the past 10 years so Iām baffled as to why youāre attempting to defend it.
I donāt think youāre reading my posts properly at all. I think we should spend more money. Much more than what has been committed so far. I think the amount of money we spend shouldnāt be an arbitrary number from the top of your head that is dependent on which transfer window players leave in.
The billionaireness of the owner is irrelevant. The club has been shambolically run for two years or more (more imho), where even bog standard basic competence would have sufficed.
It leaves the impression that DD doesnāt really care that much about the club, or its entanglement of roots with the city, itās cultural importance, and itās role in the fabric of everyday life in Glasgow. He hasnāt done anything deliberately or out of malice, but through neglect, he has left a half assed board of at best clueless grey middle management types better suited to running the Bank of Scotland local branch in Greenock than an international icon, with a self interested vulture at the top on a reward scheme based entirely on day to day profit. In the eyes of a supporter it appears to be extreme negligence. Heās been like the captain of the Costa Concordia. Itās all sailing nicely along when he leaves the bridge, but no thought given to what lies ahead, and none of the lackeys up to even the basics of steering away from the huge fucking rocks.
Anyhow.
I think by accident we have a decent manager, but he needs to be backed, and DD needs to make this clear as the board are incapable.
Iāve a forced DD analogy. His ownership of Celtic is like an investment fund buying up property in Dublin and leaving it vacant, waiting for other developments and improvements in the area to crop up, to make what they have more valuable by association . For DD, he invested in the hope that Celtic would be offered a pathway to the EPL (even if it meant starting in the lower leagues) but this is not going to happen. So heās essentially got this asset heās fairly uninterested in and itās just there lying idle to a certain extent. Lawwell and these boardroom types are the property management company that make sure the management fees are paid annually.
It has been accepted as fact that he invested in the club only once he felt personally mocked by the rangers board. I donāt think he has any more or less love for Celtic than the winner of the 3.15 at sandown. Itās the way it is. Maybe heāll change, maybe not. Maybe his family will be more aware of the responsibility brought by ownership. Itās his right as the owner to do what he wants with it, unfortunately.
Iām not saying 20m is an abritary number. What am I saying is that it will take a minimum net spend of Ā£20m to deliver us a title winning squad after years of flogging our best players for decent money and not putting it into the squad. We are reaping the consequences of Lawwell making himself the highest paid employee at the club.
Every decision at boardroom level for the past decade has not been made in the interest of the club, it has been made in the interest of the board members. Desmond doesnāt care as long as he is sitting on something that works financially for him.
You see thatās the thing about Football club owners, generally they are not in football to make money. A football club is their toy, itās the stroke of their ego when their team becomes the best, wins trophies, cement their legacy with a stadium or a training complex. Desmond has no affection for Celtic, he bought Celtic as investment he thought he could flip, he envisaged Celtic in the EPL and making a fortune. He needs to be railroaded out of the club.
How could it possibly be worse than an ownership who donāt care about the team, have no ambition for the team, wonāt invest in the team and actually take money out of the club rather than put it in.
Our second largest shareholder is a hedge fund. Theyāre likely owners if Desmond leaves. I think you have an overly optimistic view on a wealthy benefactor coming in to throw money around. A hedge fund or a charlatan like Craig Whyte or Charles Green might well be our fate if Desmond sells.
The section in the article about our wage bill being Ā£53mn in our last set of accounts yet the starting side the other night representing only c.10%-20% of that was damning. There has been some amount of waste.