MARIAN SHVED was sent out on-loan this weekend after failing to make the grade in his first full season at Celtic. The Ukrainian player coming in last term garnered a lot of excitement from the Celtic support but failed to impress Neil Lennon. No meaningful game time, and ultimately a waste of money.
The loan move to Belgian club Mechelen has highlighted a troubling trend at Celtic that outdates the current Celtic manager and has always been an issue. The amount of money spent on absolute punts from the club’s scouting system shows the need for a more methodical and focused approach.
Not every transfer is going to work out, but what we’ve seen from the likes of Edouard and Jullien, you get what you pay for in a lot of instances.
Celtic put up £9m for Odsonne Edouard and almost £7m on Christopher Jullien and they were both pivotal in bringing nine in a row home.
At the other end of the spectrum, Celtic’s wheeling and dealings with players with “Raw talent” we’ll use as a charitable word, we’re wasting a decent amount of resources.
Taking our data from Transfermarkt.com; we looked at four recent players who have done very little for the club but their fees all rack up.
Three of the four are currently still Celtic players but have been sent out on loan with little hope of a Parkhead revival upon their return. The fourth is Eboue Kouassi who has since moved to Genk after a loan spell.
Marian Shved €2.00m (Loaned Out)
Vakoun Issouf Bayo €2.23m (Loaned Out)
Jack Hendry €1.60m (Loaned Out)
Eboue Kouassi €3.50m (Sold)
The four players amount to €9.3m out of the Celtic transfer kitty.
Combined appearances = 69
Total minutes = 3,180
Cost per 90 minutes = £219,360.32
Thanks to Paul from ACSOM for working that out!
Celtic need to strike a balance between risk and proven pedigree. With the more money we’re demanding for our players, the amount we pay for our players should also climb. There’s no guarantee of success, the more money you spend but it does offer something.
Of course, you can look at Virgil van Dijk years ago as lad who came in for not much money and excelled. At the time, Dutch reporters were perplexed nobody in their league would put up the small amount of cash and actively told Celtic they were getting a player. Virgil’s talent was obvious and the club must have been rubbing their hands when they heard Groningen’s asking price.
For every van Dijk, there’s a few Marvin Comppers, the ratio needs to be balanced.
That doesn’t reflect the true figure as salary hasn’t been factored in to give an even higher expenditure for zero return .
This is a major issue with money the Club is squandering raking about for unpolished diamonds which generally yields very little same goes when buying reserve players from the bigger clubs abroad as we’ve seen over the years