The Celtic apologies and promises are coming but furious fanbase simply won’t accept them
The Celtic apologies and promises are coming but furious fanbase simply won’t accept themBrendan Rodgers has just been hit with the club’s ever worst transfer window and now the question is, how do this happen?Celtic board's transfer window blunder has EMBARRASSED the club | Hotline LiveThere might be some kind of apology, a plan to review where it all went wrong and a promise lessons will be learned.It might already be out by the time you read this. It’s happened before at Celtic after certain transfer windows that failed to deliver.More often than not, some fall guy in the recruitment department takes the hit and ends up in the Lennoxtown car park with a plant pot under his arm.Lee Congerton, Nicky Hammond and Mark Lawwell – you name it – have all been forced to walk the plank on the back of dud summers.Then again, there’s never been one this bad.Peter Lawwell, Brendan Rodgers and Michael NicholsonThese hands-up jobs are always done on the club’s official channels but it’s hard to see how even that will work this time when there’s only one question that can be asked, even by someone wearing a Celtic trackie.What the f*** happened?It’s the question all Celtic fans have been left wondering, no, raging, over.How the heck did their club manage to made such a mess of this transfer window?How does a club with so much money in the bank emerge from the summer in such a weaker state than they went into it?In fact, how the heck do they end up weaker than they were going into the last DAY of the window?Adam Idah might have been toiling to live up to the billing as the main man but punting him to Swansea and not getting a replacement is incredible.Even getting to the stage of needing to buy a striker on the final day was ridiculous.Kyogo left in January, for goodness sake.The late scramble to try to land Kelechi Iheanacho was mortifying. This is a forward who knocked Celtic back in the last window in favour of Middlesbrough – where he totally bombed.This is a guy who only managed three goals in the cup for Sevilla and eventually had his contract ripped up with a year to go.This is not the frontman who was dynamite for Brendan Rodgers for a while at Leicester City.Kelechi Iheanacho of Sevilla in action (Image: Photo By Joaquin Corchero/Europa Press via Getty Images)It’s a mirage of that guy, an echo of player from days gone by. And now he’s the bottom of the barrel in last chance saloon.That’s where Celtic spent most of deadline day, scratching around for cast offs, begging agents for players who weren’t wanted by their clubs.They did go for top targets but by failing to land them earlier, they were wide open to being gazumped.Losing out to the likes of Ajax for Kasper Dolberg would have been understandable weeks ago. Nice try, but move on.On deadline day? It’s a disaster.This isn’t a coherent transfer policy or strategy. The last few weeks have been an example in how not to run a football club.Listen, there are things that make it tough for Celtic in the market. It’s hard persuading players to come to Scotland and they are trying to shop in an environment where players will have options.That’s why Celtic had to be cuter. Had to be more proactive. Had to be aggressive.Shy bairns get nae sweets and the Hoops have been left with barely a sour plum.They did get Michel-Ange Balikwisha and Sebastian Tounekti, but both are players who could have been captured weeks before the calamity in Almaty.The pair could turn out to be handy, but they aren’t game changing, narrative shifting captures.There are the kind of signings Celtic have been doing for years. Some are hits, some are misses, but there’s no harm in trying.This time hopes for the entire campaign rest on the two of them being superstars.It’s unfair on them – and on punters who have stumped up serious cash for season books, strips and everything else.The new Bhoys are also both more left wing than Jeremy Corbyn, so one of them is going to have to shift across while Daizen Maeda will be the main striker from the foreseeable.Even if Iheanacho traps, he’s barely kicked a ball for four months and will need time.Apart from that, Celts are left with Shin Yamada, who has barely played 100 games as a pro by 25 years old, rookie Johnny Kenny, who has started only a handful of top flight games outside Ireland and Callum Osmand, who has yet to make a senior appearance.Rodgers spoke weeks ago about not wanting to just maintain his Celtic side. This isn’t even maintenance – it’s barely a patch up.This isn’t the club progressing, developing, or striving to move to the next level.It’s band aid business and it’s finally bit them on the backside. It says it all that Aberdeen can go out and sign Kevin Nesbit and Sweden international winger Kasper Karlsson and both look better deals than the Hoops managed.So what the heck did go wrong here?Only those inside the Parkhead inner sanctum will know. From the outside it looks like they’ve been caught between two strategies and end up blind alleys.They clearly couldn’t muster the transfer fee or wages packages to persuade top targets to come in time for the crucial Champions League qualifier.In the past they’d go for cheaper options on the rise and hope they worked out. On several occasions they did.But by the time the big ships sailed they had to go back to that list and the cost had gone up because the desperate stakes were raised.Hammarby paid £1m for Tounekti back in February and played Celtic like a fiddle to turn a healthy profit in just six months.That about sums it up and now they are going to have to face the flak from a furious fanbase who feel they are being short changed and a manager who’ll have to cobble together until starting this whole charade again in January.Article continues belowThey all have heard the apologies and promises before and they’ll need to hear them again.But actions will speak louder than words.
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