There should be lessons for Celtic from what happened to three forwards who started last month playing in Belgium. Anderlecht’s Kasper Dolberg seemed to be on the hook for a move to Celtic, but he was a player in demand. That has consequences.
Kasper and his agent knew that players in demand often receive bids late in the window. Why would they move before everyone has shown their hand? While Celtic tried to get the deal over the line, Ajax moved in with an offer. The player had a choice and chose to go back to the Netherlands. This is not an exception, players will often make choices like this rather than come to Scotland.
Michel-Ange Balikwisha had a good season at Royal Antwerp. With a deal to Celtic in the offing, Balikwisha’s agent had a duty to offer him everywhere north of Scottish football in the food chain. We can assume that Michel-Ange had little prospect of a bite, so signed with Celtic.
The lesson: try to recruit top players with years’ experience in highly scouted leagues and you will often fail. If they have offers from better leagues, they will go there rather than come to Scotland.
A year after Genk paid Celtic £2.4m for Hyeon-gyu Oh, he was subject to a €28m bid from Stuttgart. Reports on why the deal fell through are vague: a medical issue was reported, promoting Stuttgart to reduce their offer to €20m, which Genk declined.
There are so many lessons from Hyeon-gyu Oh’s year in Belgium it is painful to go over them. We had a player in the building who did not get the development support at Celtic which was available to him at Genk. Adam Idah was the recipient of that help, which resulted his sale on Monday for a £2m loss. You can get recruitment perfect, but if you don’t get development right, you are wasting your time.
If we want a striker who Stuttgart are prepared to pay around €20m for, we will not find them in Belgium. Recruitment is difficult, requires proper resourcing and absolutely cannot be done well working the agent circuit.
Scottish football is about to get a lesson on how it’s done by Tony Bloom’s Hearts. If we persist in trying to sign top strikers from Anderlecht, they will soon overtake us.
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december2020
https://x.com/NCCeltic/status/1334886367478894592
BRB 12.49pm
Yup. Hunnish.
Yeah, let’s see if Hearts can unearth any more hidden gems from untapped markets like Findlay and Shankland!
Whilst acknowledging there is some value in today’s leader. I feel the elephant in the room is not being addressed.
The people running the club seem to be taking the same approach, but I sense a big difference from previous years and a deeper unease within the fan base.
Not addressing it, will cause it fester, further worsen supporter/club relations and will impact revenue in many different ways.
Come on – fave it and deal with it.
jan 2021
https://x.com/NCCeltic/status/1350064525287022594/photo/1
Lessons from Belgium 🤣 . We have had lessons from every country, for many years but have learned not a lot. Why not learn a lesson from out own doorstep, in terms of regular communication. Other Scottish teams are doing it a lot better. Ours is a shambles. I would never be a CEO, as I’m not much of a people person and can’t be bothered talking a lot. Albeit, if I were offered ,~£800,000/year, then maybe I would become a CEO 🤔
The arrogant prk, with the headmaster syndrome is best ignored
In my mind, recruitment should be based on a need, a requirement
I would expect we identify most needs on the training ground. A simple spreadsheet with contract remaining time would also be a useful tool.
Alongside this, a functioning recruitment model / team should ensure a constant long list of players across the world is retained. A databse. We have a network of ‘scouts’ on some sort of retainer
When a need is identified, this team click into action and narrow down a long list of potentials to a realistic short list (potentially available, within budget, good stats etc)
The manager and money men would then look at a prioritisation exercise eg the £8m striker or the £5m striker and £3m midfielder.
Then over to the negotiators to make that happen.
It’s really joy rocket science.
This transfer window was a shambles, we shouldn’t attempt to polish this particular turd.
Lessons must be learned and mitigating actions put in place. We can’t repeat this shit show twice a year
parasites, liars, charlatans
plc
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North Curve Celtic
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8:32 pm · 3 Sep 2025
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gz7xE5nW0AASXlA?format=jpg&name=small
P67, easy to lend our collective name to the campaign for change.
can you ? will you ?
Good news of Favourite Uncle
Keep up your spirits
HH
Ziggydoc1 @ 1:18 pm,
Best run Club in Europe, getting schooled in every transfer window…
Lessons from Peterborough – “Stop Piddling About.”
Do they listen!?
Hail Hail
Burnley 78 . 12.27
That post says more about you , and how you look down on fellow Celtic supporters, than any logical argument you’ve portrayed so far .
The large majority of the supporters can see some of Brendan’s failings .
The difference is they also know that we’ve been successful over the last decades in spite of the suits , and not because they run a world class football club .
They don’t, but you only hold Brendan accountable for the train crash we’ve just witnessed.
I hope you delete your comment of 12.27 .
It betrays you and your self righteousness .
We seem to have given up on development, for now at least.
Oh had his chance and never took it.
And, the Germsn press report he failed a medical due to an injury sustained at 16, and the numbers were not €20m@
The bigger travesty is the number of young players leaving our club and going south.
I suspect that if we redirected the monies spent on wages, agents, transfer fees, lawyers, administrators and redirected it, firstly, we would have a better chance of retaining Hjelde, Borland, Doak, Kelly and secondly those players wouldn’t see their paths blocked by projects.
Also, if we really want to focus on player development, everytime a player like Miller or Hickey goes to another league we should be reviewing how we missed them. i know had Hickey, so why did he leave, and how do we learn from it.
In a country of 6m we should know every decent youth prospect and should have decades of Tony Bloom type data to guide our approach to in house player development.
Seems a very long time ago that Peter Lawwell was doing a tour of Celtic Supporters Clubs (with Neil Lennon-the temporary manager) basically begging supporters to stick with the team and buy Season Tickets.
Now the board, including Lawwell’s replacement, don’t seem to give a shit about the supporters.
Those darned rotters Club Bruges don’t seem to have any consideration for leaving behind poor wee Cercle Bruges…..
A (s)knob of the highest order…..
https://philmacgiollabhain.ie/2025/09/04/a-reality-cheque-from-the-celtic-board/#more-38054
Stivs – keep ‘em coming.
Burnley78 on 4th September 2025 12:27 pm
So many sad folks determined to vent their bitterness with zero experience of actually doing much in life. Really hilarious.
You really should think before you post son……
Assume your the sort of person who is unable to see anyone else’s point of view?
Or maybe just an arrogant fud?
geebee1978
Well he is in a very competitive environment this season. But even so he has a helluva CV, assistant to Brendan Rodgers at Swansea, Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester, assistant to Ange in his first season at Spurs, and got Birmingham promoted to the Championship as manager in his first season there. I’d like to think he could be a prospective Celtic manager somewhere down the road.
Paul’s general approach is that we should be a “development club” while avoiding the “messiah manager”. I don’t disagree with that but even he must see that as a club we’re not set up for that.
Minutes on the pitch is important in a player’s development, but it’s not everything. If we were taking development seriously, rather than leaving it with the manager to do as they wish, we’d have a better set-up in place.
For example, we have 4 coaches supporting the manager, only one of whom the manager brought with him. This is largely the same as when Ange was around with Kewell picking up Sadler’s position. Let’s look at a “proper” development club – Brighton. They have 11 coaches in about roles supporting their manager. If we’re serious about development that’s the sort of coaching set up we need – enough coaches to be able to spend some 1-1 time with the development players each day with the manager basically setting out what each player needs to focus on to bridge the gap from where they are to where they need to be.
We’d also look at having a proper b team or proper partnership approach with a club to get minutes to those who are not going to get minutes with us. With us sending coaches to monitor and work with the players, rather than just send them there and hoping for the best or forgetting about them. Anderson for example spent two years at Admira. Is he any worse than Inamura as an option at left back? Who knows.
And while we’ll lose players to EPL clubs, we need to be improving our youth setup. Develop our own. And recruit players from other setups. Again, a proper B Team would help!
We’ve the best part of £80m in the bank if not more. Go buy a Belgian club and use that to develop our youths and the likes of Inamura with the right coaches supporting that. And Celtic should focus on what we are good at – taking first team ready players and giving them a platform before selling them on!
ONIL. I totally agree. The egregious arrogance of that post is only outdone by its utterly breathtaking stupidity.
Given he has first hand knowledge of the club and the reports about our handling of Yang, the thought that Chris Davies is a future manager is for the birds!
Ray Winstone’s Big Disembodied Heid on 4th September 2025 2:18 pm
Some folk have absolutely no self awareness?
A rather toxic Celtic Quick News this week.
Can’t wait till the football starts again.
ONIL. Yes. There’s a definite whiff of Prince Andrew about it.
Celtic40me @ 1:36 pm,
We seem to have given up on development, for now at least.”
Well, I guess this is a response to the lead…
“You can get recruitment perfect, but if you don’t get development right, you are wasting your time.”
So first and foremost let’s get rid of the hyperbole.
1. You can’t get recruitment perfect and Celtic are particularly bad at recruitment
2. Managers from Clubs the size of Celtic don’t develop players.
However Celtic noticing how poorly they have been at player development as a Club restructured the Academy and brought in Shaun Maloney as Professional Player Pathway Manager.
The Academy players and recruited projects with be given a development plan and the best of them will hopefully progress to the first team.
Now, that of course doesn’t mean footballers don’t develop as players in a first team environment, far from it, and our current manager is one of the best in the business in that regard.
Of course it depends what level the player is at and his potential level.
Remember, Brendan Rodgers has only been back at Celtic two seasons and we have seen vast improvements in many players.
In season one, he put 20 mn value on Matt O’Riley.
In season two, he put 12 mn value on Nic Kuhn.
He also improved squad players to first team group players like Liam Scales and HJ Yang.
Currently Sinisalo, Dane Murray, Johnny Kenny are developing as players and gaining first team experience.
Hail Hail
VINNIETHEDOG. @ 1:08pm
💯, there’s only one embarrassment on this blog.
I get confused with the strategy that we buy cheap, develop then sell at a profit
In fairness to our Board and Manager we have done that for the past few years
So we are sitting on a load of cash (approx £70m – not counting what we just made this window)
What happens now ?
We seem to have done a good job at gambling with unknown players and selling them for profit
Are we simply going to sit on the £70m sell a couple more players then sit on £90m
Then keep going to make the £90m into £120m
Now the lights come on
When do we actually spend the fruits of our labour – when do we realise the benefit of the profit ??
I was always led to believe (by Peter Lawwell) that any profit is invested back into the team
Well there is a significant profit at the mo, but very little investment
What’s the profit for if its not used to support the Manager and the team
Confused
67ECW
BADA- it’s hard to ignore him when he continues to be a prk
So, there you are then…..
It’s it’s not the recruitment, it’s the development……!
As in…..
It’s not Nicholson’s fault, it is the coach’s fault.
As the Allman Brothers Band used to say:
‘I ain’t wasting time no more’….
Weerun.
Spidey101 @ 2:14 pm,
Yes, you are spot on, I posted my comment before I read yours.
You make some very good points.
On a general observation…
After BRMk1 left, it was decided to put Coaches and Staff in place that were permanent i.e. not changing with each manager.
This was meant to give continuity with the Clubs approach and ethos.
Is it working?
Hail Hail
Cannot understand why a Reserve Lrague is not brought in. In my day, if Celtic were far away we’d go and watch the reserves, some great football too. On top of that, emerging talent were on show.
During the life of the Lisbon Lions, we’d go to see the likes of Danny McGrain, Kenny D, Lou Macari and David Hay, and hey, the “done good ” did they not.
Happy days indded
kingLUBO
bigrailroadblues on 4th September 2025 12:49 pm
Burnley 78 12.27
Disgraceful post.
…………………
CORRECT BRRB.
SHOCKING POST from a so called Celtic supporter who has NOT got a clue of how anyone else has managed their life.
He is a SAD FUCK !
spidey101@2.19
If that comment is aimed at me then address it to me.
Either way it is one of the most infantile comments posted on here recently, and there have been more than a few. The very idea that Chris Davies is going to be put out by his former colleague’s decision to keep Yang, a decision almost certainly relayed to him personally, now that really is for the birds. Take a look at his background, easy enough, he has been a qualifed professional for nearly twenty years, he has a first class honours degree in Sports Science from Loughborough University the pre-eminent sports college in England, has worked abroad, and began working with Brendan Rodgers fifteen years ago at Swansea, and he has achieved so much by the age of forty he might even meet Burnley78’s standards of approval. The man is a total professional, and now that he is a manager he is going to have make those kind of decisions himself, he will understand perfectly that these things happen in football, all the time. The very fact that it would affect his relationship, past, present or future with the Celtic Board, is so off the wall it would never occur to any right thinking Celtic supporter. He’s not running the school tuckshop down there…
It’s good to see the Celtic support getting themselves organised and mobilised to demand answers.
Celtic fans are grateful I suppose that Dermot Desmond to an extent has backed the club financially in the last 20 years or so. However he has no vision for this club and they guys in the big billionaire class have visions to get to where they have got……..,,but we are no’ in any one o’ Dermot’s visions it seems.
Strength through numbers.
The customer is always right.