CELTIC took a massive step forward with regards to their plans for the future by appointing new chief scout Nicky Hammond to a permanent role at the club.

Hammond had helped oversee the summer recruitment and got a thumbs up from most Celtic fans but more importantly from the Celtic hierarchy.

Hammond walked into a role which was mismanaged for the better part of three seasons with Lee Congerton at the helm at the wishes of Brendan Rodgers. Now both have left their Celtic posts, more information is coming out about their bizarre recruitment.

It’s not mystery Celtic fans were bemused by the state of Celtic’s recruiting under Rodgers and it was the managers ability to coach that made him so successful rather than how well they did recruit.

Speaking on RecordSports podcast, journalist Michael Gannon lifted the lid on some of the stories which came out of Celtic Park on

“Hammond is starting with a pretty low level expectation because his predecessor wasn’t very good at it. The targets were unrealistic.

“Congerton’s sole remit was recruitment. Hammond might be more hands-on contractually and dealing directly with Lawwell.

“You won’t get to that situation of an £8million full-back turning up talks wanting £75,000-per-week and getting laughed out the building.

“You won’t get to that stage because Hammond is there to negotiate and is setting up the networks to get these targets in and will know the parameters Celtic are working under.

“It was weird (under Rodgers and Congerton), Celtic either moved for players they couldn’t afford or ones below the standard required and paid over the odds.”

If a scintilla of this is on the money then what was going on in the scouting department was nothing short of a shambles. The deal Gannon would be referring to was Celtic’s pursuit of Cristiano Piccini; there was plenty of rumours with RecordSport writing about it last year.

Celtic were in need of a right back to solve the long standing issue, however, the player would turn around and sign for Valencia shortly after a move to Celtic looked on the cards.

Has Gannon just gave the game away with what really happened?

It appears Rodgers was playing a cat and mouse game with the board – bringing them players he knew they’d refuse but he’d push them to try and go the extra mile. It worked with Edoaurd I suppose!

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