BRENDAN RODGERS has been an absolute revelation at Celtic. His real quality and biggest asset for Celtic is coaching good players to become great players.
We have seen that in the likes of Scott Brown, James Forrest, Dedryck Boyata, Callum McGregor, Kieran Tierney (Great to phenomenal) and now even Ryan Christie – just to name a few!
Where the Celtic manager has lacked is consistently bringing in players who can make a difference. Yes, we have Dembele, Ntcham, Eddy and Sinclair to a certain extent BUT we have also hand Hendry, Gamboa, Compper, Hayes and right now Kouassi.
If the summer window showed anything it was the scouting department was uninspired at best.
Not having targets ready in case influential players were sold and scrambling last minute with bids for players that were in no way prepared for a Celtic team.
The most prominent example of this was Scott McKenna, with Celtic panicking over Boyata’s situation and maybe looking to let the player go, Celtic turned to Aberdeen with a bid of around £3.5million.
For many Celtic fans, that was way over what Celtic should be paying for McKenna, and they even questioned why the club was chasing the Scotland star in the first place.
There seemed to be a lack of options in front of Celtic. Thankfully they didn’t have that bid accepted, and Aston Villa was also apparently knocked by the Dons to the tune of around £6.5million.
This is where the story of McKenna to Celtic should end.
However, over the weekend, reports claimed Celtic would look to try again for the defender come the January window.
Considering Celtic had a large bid rejected for the defender, and with McKenna still being on a long-term deal with the Pittodrie side, it would take a massively overpriced bid to land him.
If Celtic were to go above their £3.5million summer estimation, it would signal just how uninspired we have become.
That firmly lies at Lee Congerton’s doors. Rodgers brought him in to find a new wave of talent for Celtic, and it didn’t look good for him this summer.
Many believe the head scout has been ‘lacking’, to put it politely.
It was the Celtic manager’s choice to bring him in even though many people at Sunderland said Congerton was a risk and hindered the English club when he worked for them.
McKenna could maybe be a good hand and grow into the role, but talk of the figures above should be enough for Celtic to look elsewhere.
Ultimately, Celtic need choices, and we need scouts who will go out there and find a Wanyama, a van Dijk etc.
If a big money move for McKenna is all we’re thinking, it’s time for Rodgers appointed head scout to go.
