Celtic have recalled Stephen Welsh from his loan at Motherwell.
So that’s centre back sorted then. 
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Ffs
It’s all very quiet, which is frankly mad when you consider how they should have had a striker signed on 1 January, and actually need two. A year after they sold Kyogo & they were faffing around last week trying to replace him with…Kyogo. Never mind other positions where they’re desperately short of quality in too. It seems to be an absolute shambles behind the scenes there.
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Every window is the same. Start off a little optimistic that surely, surely this time they’ll have learned lessons and we will have deals well advanced before the window opens and we’ll make the necessary improvements.
Day by day it gets more worrying. Then you remember that each time you think the transfer windows might improve, they don’t.
We badly need to improve the team. We also badly need to be able to rotate players.
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Last part is key really, isn’t it? If you think back to O’Neill’s earlier stint this season, he clearly made his mind up on some players & barely used them (Balikwisha, Bernardo etc). There was quite a drop off in performance level in the last couple of games against Hibs & Dundee, albeit they secured narrow wins in both games. But the core players he’d trusted in nearly all the games looked fairly bolloxed off the back of the Feyenoord away game & the cycle of weekend->midweek-weekend games. Another 3 games per week schedule kicked off last weekend & there’s a lack of quality & numbers now.
Unreal to be honest
Tinpot
The reports say that Celtic inserted a clause in the season long loan agreed last summer that allowed them to recall Welsh in January, but it expires mid month (so the rug can’t be pulled out from Motherwell right at the end of the window). With Simpson-Pusey gone to Koln, only Murray to back up Scales & Trusty, the recruitment being a shambles & clearly no other centre half lined up…O’Neill probably was correct to recall him for now. Obviously this time 18 months ago you’d have hoped Celtic would be moving on without Welsh but say one of the starting centre halves gets a serious injury in the next few games & they hadn’t taken up the recall option…but yeah it’s another example of the dysfunctional set up there.
Seems the stuff that went on with Kyogo & Birmingham last week was mad too.
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Not to worry though we have the mighty Balikwisha and Tounketti to lead the charge now 
. By God do we know how to pick them
Absolute clownshoe stuff to be forced to go into the transfer market in January in a desperate situation when the club, who are notoriously tight, will be fleeced even more by selling clubs who will try to take advantage of that desperation. The club will be reluctant to be fleeced and we will end up back where they started with little quality coming in and the club coming out with some rubbish statement about lack of value in the market or some other communication passing the buck.
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Look mate, the Ryder cup is coming up. You need priorities.
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Still 21 months away. 
Celtic have spent so long looking on the bargain rails for a better bargain that the bargains, such as they are, are gone. They’ll either have to buy (rent) new season stock or make do with a return frock with lipstick marks and a broken zip.
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It takes years to plan for and excite about a circle jerk that big for the horsey horse, golf and sterling decoupling set.
It’s beyond repetitive. Everyone understands that you shouldn’t be reckless, e.g. like Manchester United under Ed Woodward making opening bids for players like Antony double what the selling club was privately expecting etc etc. But the explosion of money in football plus INFLATION means you can’t be constantly scratching around & lowballing clubs. The days of Celtic taking best players from other SPL clubs for a pittance are long gone so Celtic still seem to shopping around that £1mn-£2.5mn market across various world leagues. You might pick up an odd decent player but the strike rate will naturally be very low, especially as the transfer fees & sell on clauses clubs at that level are demanding have ramped up too. Ergo the quality available at that price won’t be great at all. Plenty of chat that various football agencies & clubs refuse to deal with Celtic any more because of the carry on over recent years.
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Before @thedancingbaby time but we spent more on thom and o donnell than we do now
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Just said the same in a less succinct manner. The club needs to tear up whatever the fuck they’ve been doing in the area of recruitment, scouting, player trading & start again. How the academy links into all that should be considered too. A strategic plan should even be developed with milestones & accountability (cc work jargon thread). Although a fella in a meeting yesterday said “let’s not try to push the elephant up the hill here.”
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He had a point.
Was he talking about Casper?
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And even 10-15 years after Thom etc they paid £4.5mn-£5mn for Scott Brown in 2007 but 10 years on from that they wouldn’t budge beyond £800k for John McGinn! Now apparently they’ve enquired for Kieran Bowie around the £1.5mn mark & Hibs’ valuation is £6.5mn. The other Scottish clubs know these days that even second tier English clubs (& Italian clubs) have the financial firepower to provide them with decent fees so they’re not pressurised into selling to Celtic or the huns.
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Should have stuck with Adam idah
Poor Adam got a bad hamstring tear before Christmas & it’s looking like a 2/3 month job & he’ll probably miss the Ireland play-off in March. It’s a pity as I think he’d scored his second goal for Swansea just before that in a Welsh derby victory against Wrexham.