CELTIC goal hero Chris Sutton has written off his former club’s chances of winning their fifth successive title.
With seven games to go, Martin O’Neill’s side are five points adrift of Hearts – and the one-time Hoops striker doesn’t believe the champions have the quality to make up the deficit.
Sutton goes as far as to say the “squad’s a mess” and the club will have to look at bringing in at least FIFTEEN recruits in the summer in a colossal shake-up of the playing staff.
A clearly unimpressed former England international forward said: “Celtic fans could be in for some long weeks of pain.
LOOKING DOWN…Martin O’Neill can’t hide his disappointment at Tannadice last weekend.
“If the club doesn’t start repairing some of the serious and self-inflicted damage placed onto themselves, that could end up stretching into months and turning one bad season into another.
“I’m well aware the focus on the park is about the here and now. In that respect, I have to say it’s not going well in terms of the title race.
“I don’t think Celtic are going to win this battle. It needs seven wins out of seven, or at least six and a draw.
“Does this Celtic side look to you as though they are capable of that? If you think they are, then you are watching a different set of players from the ones I have been seeing for months.
“It’s hard enough to imagine Celtic putting seven passes together on the evidence of last Sunday at Tannadice never mind seven wins.”
Sutton, speaking to the Daily Record, continued: “The squad’s a mess. Players don’t look as though as they are connected as one unit and the overall standard is pretty miserable.
“That loss to Dundee United was the final nail in the Celtic title coffin for me as I now see Hearts and Rangers having a better chance of lifting the trophy.
SINKING FEELING…Luke McCowan, Yang Hyun-jun and Benjamin Arthur look on as Emmanuel Agyei prepares to fire in Dundee United’s second goal.
“Look at the teams Martin has been picking over the past few weeks and that will give you an idea on what he thinks of those acquisitions. Joel Mvuka? Junior Adamu? Tomas Cvancara? There just hasn’t been the required impact from any of them.
“Fans have seen an erosion of a successful squad right in front of their eyes at the same time as money is bursting out of the club’s bank vault.
“It’s hard to quantify just how much work Celtic have to do to sort out this mess in the summer. It’s a Herculean job.
“There are few players in that squad who would be worthy of staying, yet even some of those who are proven winners such as Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate are clearly at the end of their cycle at the club and have to be moved on.
“Mix that with all the loan signings who will go back to their clubs, the loanees who will return who were not deemed good enough to stay for this season in the first place and the additions which had to be made over the past three windows, you are talking about the need for around 12 or 15 players.”
Sutton, who was O’Neill’s first-ever signing for Celtic at £6million from Chelsea in the summer of 2000, added: “Who, may I ask, is plotting and planning at the moment and putting the groundwork to get these players?
SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR…Daizen Meada fails with a close-range attempt with Dundee United keeper Ashley Maynard-Brewer trying to cover.
“Well, we all know that Martin is going to be leaving, so it’s not him. Where is the new recruitment head? Who is the Director of Football? Is there going to be one?
“Maybe there’s a grand plan in the background that none of us know about. My suspicion is that there is not and, if there is, why not come and say? Silence is deafening.
“It’s hard to see some many mistakes being covered over the space of one summer.
“Celtic are in big bother in the here and now. If they don’t sort themselves out quickly, it might be more of the same later.”
The Hoops will have to make history if they are to win their fourteenth crown in the past 15 years.
No team who has lost eight league games in one season – a lamentable sequence of horrendous failure achieved by the Hoops this time around – has ever won the championship since the introduction of three points for a win in the 1994/95 campaign.
O’Neill’s men return to Premiership action against Dundee at Dens Park a week tomorrow.
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