Brendan Rodgers has declined to give a direct answer on why Celtic’s summer transfer business has been slower than expected.
Answering a question from Celtic Fans TV during Friday’s media duties, the manager was asked whether the hold-up was down to identifying targets or negotiating deals to get them over the line.
This comes after Go Ahead Eagles’ chairman Jan Willem slammed Celtic for taking their time and dragging their heels in negotiations over Jakob Breum, and claimed that Rangers were much better to deal with. Celtic have already pulled out of negotiations for the player, it seems.
Rodgers made it clear he wasn’t prepared to go into that level of detail in public, and a press conference wasn’t the place to discuss that.
“No, I don’t really want to go into that, it’s not the forum for that,” he said on Celtic TV. “It’s one where our scouts and recruitment are working ever so hard identifying players, really good players.
“So yeah, we just hope by the endgame that we can get the right level of player in that can help us and improve us. And we all know what supporters want to see. They want to see that freshness in the team, they want to see the team being exciting.
“I’m hopeful that we can do that over these remaining weeks, and then go off into the season in a really good place.”
While Rodgers didn’t confirm if the issue lies in player identification or finalising deals, he stressed his confidence that the right additions will arrive before the window shuts.
However, he didn’t seem convincing about the prospect of getting new faces through the door before the Champions League qualifiers later this month.
It was a hard question for him to answer, but his non-answer does give us some of the picture. There’s clearly frustration there from the manager.
More of the Irish Blarney from Brendan. Other clubs around Europe, even the mob in Govan, have their transfer business done and dusted and yet here we are again with the Celtic recruitment team having brought in some bargain basement additions, still hoarding the money from sales of our our best quality players.
There is absolutely no excuse for the squad being this light at this point in the transfer window, it’s incopetence at best and shocking money hoarding at worst. It was precisely this failure to recruit early on last year that led to £26m being paid for three players not worth one third of that price tag. Idah, Engels and Trusty have all disappointed with their consistency. They are average players, not great players and certainly not worth the rip-off prices we paid for them. Now Dermot is trying to claw the cost back by not properly investing in the team this time around. I’m sick of it with these people and with Brendan’s blarney. They are not “trying ever so hard to get the right players”, they are trying ever so hard to the cheapest deals they can find, regardless of quality. Shocking.
If Brendan can’t bring himself to call the Board out for not backing him then my suggestion is that he keeps his mouth shut instead of insulting the fans with garbage about how hard the Board are trying. We didn’t come down with the last shower!