Celtic’s injury worries have been well documented this season, but it was not hard for the transfer department to see the future.
Jot was already ruled out for much of this season before the summer transfer window opened, while Cameron Carter-Vickers had to have a tidy-up operation in the summer.
That told Celtic that they’d need reinforcements. Or it should’ve. Any competent club would look to make moves.
Instead, Celtic sold Nicolas Kuhn and Adam Idah in the summer, without replacing either of them in the transfer window.
After the window had slammed shut, the hoops panicked and swooped for Iheancho, whose contract had just been ripped up. He made his first start since December on Sunday.
The recruitment has been a major player in the unrest at Celtic this season. Rodgers wasn’t backed in the summer and O’Neill was left with sub-par loan players in January.
Joel Mvuka, who is probably the Kuhn replacement, has impressed no one at Celtic and hasn’t made a start since his debut and only featured against Rangers in extra time since.
Stephen McGowan says that the damage this season has been self-inflicted, and he’s not wrong.
Writing in the Herald on Monday morning, he said:
“While injuries to key players Jota, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Alistair Johnston have clearly had a detrimental impact on the starting XI, much of the damage is self-inflicted. Complacency, the sale of important goal scorers, the arrival of mediocre replacements, the appointments of Paul Tisdale as head of football operations, and Nancy, and a refusal to swing and miss has created a Celtic team straight out of 1994.
“Wayne Biggins and Stuart Slater could barely have looked any less menacing than their attacking options did yesterday. Failure to spend on a consistent, dependable goal-scoring striker has left O’Neill chopping and changing up front, throwing jelly at the wall, hoping something sticks.”
Preparations for next season have to be underway now, but do any of us trust the club to get things right? I highly doubt it.
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2 responses
There is no doubt the board have caused the major problems but the players on the park should still be good enough to win games. Come the summer I would empty most of them and start a major rebuild and not with 50p loan players.
Rodgers warned often enough that if you don’t refresh and strengthen from a position of strength then you go backwards and deteriorate – and that is exactly what has happened, thanks to an absolutely useless CEO in Nicholson.
The Rangers went through their ‘ordeals’ and with little competition, Nicholson & his Board in their incompetence and arrogance, have sat on their hands and set the team back for at least another season if not more.
The recruitment has been atrocious , with the exception of Sarrachi and Araujo and the only saving grace is that they’re mostly ‘loan’ players (Adamu, Mvuka, Cvancara, Iheanacho & Chamberlain), who can be sent packing at the end of the season.
The Board will of course be relying on injured players like Johnston, CCV, Engels, Jota and young Osmond to come back so won’t spend what’s needed to refresh and strengthen the team.
We’ll be lucky if they bring in a much needed striker – and even then, the recruitment set up appears to be so incompetent, what faith could anyone have that they’d actually manage to get a decent one in and not just someone unwanted by other clubs.