Maik Nawrocki is reportedly in France for a medical with Lens, who finished just six points behind European champions PSG, in Ligue 1 last season. He is the latest of our crop of 2023 recruits who other clubs have seen enough talent to move for.
When Maik left Legia Warsaw to come to Celtic three years ago the Polish club were quoted as saying he would be come the next Virgil van Dijk in Glasgow. As well as being an outstanding defender in Warsaw for two years, the then 22-year-old had the ability to take a pass under pressure and step into midfield.
Celtic had followed Maik and Gus Lagerbielke (who reached the Europa League semifinal with Braga last season) the previous season under Ange Postecoglu, then Brendan Rodgers signed both, but the Irishman wanted a ready-made central defender and secured Nat Phillips on deadline day. Neither Maik nor Gus were given a proper chance in Glasgow.
This is an age old debate in football: sign and develop prospects, or sign experienced players who are no longer getting a game in places like the EPL. There is no absolute right answer. Factors like who the club is, their tolerance for development and most crucially, the ability of their manager to develop young players, all have to be factored.
I understand Brendan Rodgers had not seen much of Nat Phillips when the agent call came in, but the deal had enough in it to entice the Celtic manager. A player with EPL experience, albeit limited, offered him comfort.
Having said there are no absolute answers to this question, for Celtic, there is a strong preference. Our football identity should not be one of the displaced who formerly featured on Match of the Day but are no longer seen there.
This morning, I also see reports of how Celtic are finding it difficult to attract their top targets to the Scottish league. This has always been the case and should surprise no one. Do the hard recruitment yards. Have options with development road ahead and with profiles low enough to consider Glasgow Shangri-La. Nurture a reputation as a place where prospects come and thrive, and then get their move to the EPL.
This works. It is a coherent football identity for Celtic. We have yet to recover from the events of 2023.
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But he wasn’t the next Virgil van Dijk. He wasn’t even the next Dick van Dijk.
Since he was signed, 3 experienced manages have looked at him and thought… nah.
That’s a fairly convincing consensus of the unconvinced.
Paul67
Have you considered counselling?
HH
I honestly thought derangement syndrome was a myth.
Still, should encourage plenty of engagement
Meanwhile, in the real world…
A repost:
Comforting to know that our chief transfer negotiator has just told anyone who is interested that he doesn’t know how to negotiate.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
Adidas Stripes on César’s Boots
It was over for this Celtic board last year. There was no way back they had already lost every bet with reality, yet somehow convinced themselves the answer was to keep doubling down. Now the only thing hanging over Dermot Desmond’s bhoys is change. Change, and then some more, it’s inevitable.
Everything takes an age at Celtic when the people in charge mistake silence for leadership. “Executive presence” has become the art of being conspicuously absent.
Martin O’Neill—the spriteliest septuagenarian in world football—is shuttling between London, the Algarve, the Campsies and Parkhead. He’s a new man again, a Sevillian providing reassurance for the “ great guys .” They’re now telling us signing players is hard, à la Peter Lawwell 15 years ago.
Running a football club is even harder. Refreshingly candid of the CEO to acknowledge what many supporters had already worked out, for themselves.
A fading World Cup provides a convenient backdrop while the club quietly, ahem rearranges the furniture. Meanwhile, supporters are still reflecting on the parting-of-the-seas third goal that delivered the most improbable league title in our history. There should be a buzz about the place?
How is the supporter supposed to know which Celtic silence is intentional (quote BW) and which is simply silence? Ask the interim chairman ? He has been working on communication since January. Rocked up in 2005, there in the background noted for what? – some shift Brian cons
The answer that unemployed players are easier to sign was patronising and spoke volumes about the club’s thinking. Two months on from his Scottish Cup-winning goal, Keletchi Iheanacho’s name still drifts around the margins. Has any meaningful progress been made? patience is a virtue, drift is a bad habit.
MON can commute—but why is he doing it?—while the familiar summer cycle prepares to begin. The annual sell-high model rolls on, the squad gets leaner, and someone else is expected to take another swing at Europe. Once again, Celtic will hope that good fortune can compensate for shortcomings that should already have been addressed.
Martin the go-between Dermot is the owner—we don’t care what the stationery says. The sat-nav is programmed for another summer of chasing good value, preserving the successful structure and protecting the model that has delivered dividends alongside domestic success.
You can paint on three stripes, you can’t paint over a club.
🇨🇮🇨🇮🇨🇮🇨🇮🇨🇮
Archive between Kwon and Tilio in a file marked ‘The Ones That Brendan Let Get Away’.
Is Paulling akin to trolling ?
Nawrocki won’t see first team action at lens. He will be a back up. Played lower league football last season.
He was signed as part of the 2023 scattergun of all scattergun approaches to recruitment most of which have gone on to play at a lower level than Celtic.
Lagerbielke ( who wasn’t scouted at all but offered to us by starfelts agent as a last minute replacement) has done ok with the 4th best team Portugal.
But its horses for courses. We need defenders who can defend from the halfway line and that’s isn’t Lagerbielke or nawrockis forte.
Same with Shane Duffy great backs to the wall defender but start him from the halfway line….
The 2023 window was all about the potential resale with no thoughts about the needs of the team. When successive managers don’t rate the same players it tells you a lot. The only one who is still here is Yang who last season became a regular starter by default when in reality if we had done our job properly he would be in the English championship or a peripheral back up player. One assist all season for a winger in a 4-3-3 system?
I don’t care if players are young with potential or experienced. So long as they fit the needs of the team and contribute positively. That’s where moneyball so often gets it wrong as it’s often a case of pissing in the wind in the hope it occasionally blows in the right direction
Some absolute nonsense in there,17 appearances for a 2nd Division German team,if you offer clubs and players the right money, they will come, the nonsense that everyone is against us when trying to sign a footballer,it’s because we have incompetent lawyers and accountants in charge of the most important part of any club,recruitment,….get professionals in.
Good luck to Maik if he passes his medical, had plenty of absences due to injury, of course it’s the fault of BR no-one else.
BSR
I think a GoFundMe from CQNers to finance mediation between P67 and BR…
On Nicholson’s assertion about competing with the English Championship, I asked Copilot to compare Celtic’s wage bill to West Brom’s (an established Championship team typically in an around the play-offs and not bloated by recent balloon payments, I chose them as a decent benchmark).
Copilot indicates that West Brom’s wage bill is between £19-22 million, just around 25% of Celtic’s £75 million wage bill. FSR being a key factor here. Perhaps desirable players would delight in the attractions of the Black Country over what Glasgow has to offer, although I personally doubt it.
Across the division the median wage bill is between 40-50% of Celtic’s, even allowing for the likes of West Ham coming down with their parachute payments.
Instead what we seem to have is a very highly paid CEO talking the club and city down to defend a strategy of parsimony in service of one man rather than those who fund club and provide its hearts.
All of his credibility is gone. Get him in the bin.
Martin would know – he’s seen enough in his second and third spells here to make a judgement on this, he was pretty unequivocal about it the other day to the Irish CSCs.
The worry was that he wasnt able to move on from what worked in his first spell. That he wouldnt learn from the mistakes we made over the last few years. he has learned quickly, I was guilty of underestimating his intelligence.
He was about as unequivocal as you’re likely to hear from a Celtic manager on incoming transfers.
“Martin O’Neill mentioned his previous time at Celtic and mentioned how much easier signings were. He mentioned specifically Sutton and Lennon, both who he knew inside out as a player, and knew they would thrive in Scotland.
“He mentioned now that players are different. Older players will push to display themselves in the Premiership albeit at a bottom table team, purely for more money.
“He mentioned Bournemouth, who when he was finishing up as a player, nobody would envisage being a Premier League team, but are now competing massively in the transfer market, but with no Champions League to entice players.
“He also pointed out that, our better chances are a younger player, who will take the gamble in Glasgow, purely to play in Europe. They have better drive, ambition and are more suited to Celtic because they can be developed and aren’t swayed as much by wages.”
Bada
That will only take place under a new owner/owners.
Sound familiar?
This isnt about just making money – he’s said what some of us have been banging on about for years, its about the players we can attract and put on the park:
“our better chances are a younger player, who will take the gamble in Glasgow, purely to play in Europe. They have better drive, ambition and are more suited to Celtic because they can be developed and aren’t swayed as much by wages
More of the sort of signings Brendan talked about before he went off piste after making all the right noises at the start and then proceeded to bang his head aghast a brick wall and blame the Board for it.
Not just these players, though. But more, many more
The CEO has made a mockery of us again this summer but wait we ate still recovering from 2003🙄
Two weeks of preseason was enough for MoN to move Nawrocki on.
That’s gonna be difficult to pin on BR 😂
Its really impressive that Martin is saying this considering what it means for the team he will put on the park in what is probably his only full season in charge. He’s putting Celtic first – he wont see the full benefits of signing young and he’s not making himself any more popular bringin some harsh reality to the situation
*are …
ACSOM is only
https://www.youtube.com/live/x56_De2aRQA?si=N12VLq-s9vac1nUM
According to Michael Nicholson , any players we are tracking see their path to the EPL via the English championship and not via Celtic . MN should be using every means at his disposal to attract players . The stepping stone idea (citing the likes of Van Dijk , Ajer , O’Riley), CL football , a huge fanbase who will adore you if you are successful , testimony from big players like Joe Hart , medals and trophies . Get as close to the fees and wages that Championship clubs are offering without being silly .
Compared to Celtic , these clubs are small clubs if you take away the TV money.
MN needs to put the white flag away and hand over to someone who will not sell us short .
Imagine the scene, the morning after Viking eliminate Celtic from this season’s Champions League following home and away wins over a Celtic team comprising Sinasalo, Ralston, CCV, Scales, KT, CalMac (optimistically), Luke, McArdle, Yang, Tounetki and Duran.
Wee Michael nervously squeaks “it was really difficult to get players in to compete in this tie against formidable Norwegian champions”.
Meanwhile Viking’s CEO looks forward to investing all of that lovely ECL windfall in his team/ club, boosting its £4 million wage bill, one-nineteenth of Celtic’s…
Oh and I spent a week in Stavanger in the 90s with a university chum from there (who became big tim). It really has nothing on Glasgow except the surrounding fjords.
“We have yet to recover from the events of 2023.”
————————
Well I certainly couldn’t argue with that. The infamous Kwontity Over Quality window.
A great opportunity to push on from a position of strength frittered away and back to square one.
Strange that MON is willing to let this world-class player leave!
As to Lagerbielke – did you watch him at the World Cup, Paul? Wasn’t at all impressed myself, although fair play to the guy for going to a team capable of winning European knockout ties.
Here’s a really wild idea – why not just sign good players and who fit the system we play!
Yang last of the summer of 23 nine.
Hannover ( Bundesliga 2 passed on Maik Nawrocki) just like BR doing his job, and even recalled Liam Scales from Aberdeen. Trusty is of course a lot better and has a retail value
Good luck Maik 👍
Your headline should surely have been about how our extremely well paid CEO was bleating to a bunch of Irish Celtic supporters about how hard it is for him (and others ) to do their jobs. That merited much greater comment and concern.
Wouldn’t it also be nice if he actually addressed the Celtic support as a whole.
I do agree that finding it difficult to attract players to the Scottish league should not be a surprise, but why is our CEO talking in such a “can’t do” attitude. Humiliating.
Why do they find agents hard to deal with? Well, shall we take a guess?
A player is valued at £8-10m but we offer £3m. If we do get to even be in the conversation do we offer wages that are realistic?
The modern game is run by players. Accept it or get off the pot. If we have to overpay for only a decent player then we have to do that – and not sign two mediocre players. E.G If Elijah Just wanted £30k pw but we think he is a £15k pw player then if it secures a player that makes us stronger then sign him. Better that than two players for £15kpw both of whom will not get near the first team squad.
Over the last decade our squad has been littered with mediocrity. Players bought for very small fees and presumably modest wages and as a result we have a bloated squad. So many of these players played once or twice for the club. I’d rather we signed fewer players but better quality and took a risk with injuries.
When we did spend both Engels and Idah were a success. The former will bring in over £10m profit net whilst also contributing to a double. Idah scored the winner in a Scottish cup final and key goals in big games against Motherwell and Hibs. We may have made a net loss but overall it was not money wasted entirely.
I do agree with some of what you said though Paul, about trying to use our club as a place to develop. A retirement home for players is not for me picking up a nice pension when they have little ambition. If we do sign a player over 30 I would like it to be because he is “living the dream” or looking to recover from adversity.
I think few of us believe signing good players is easy but our club makes out that we are facing a battle that others are not. Our rivals would never come out with such comments.
Sometimes you have to go an extra step to secure who you want. Every window does not have to be a net spend either.
We are about to have a home turnout tomorrow that will embarrass us as a club. We enter the season once again with no fan media allowed at CP, little excitement and one new player signed. We are expected to turn up on August 3rd and be “all in” on a Monday night whilst knowing that four/five of our first XI will be sold for tens of millions of pounds but we will do very little until that happens. We will once again take a chance on the CL but really, do we want to to be there?
If we as a club are getting outbid by Swansea then that is saddening.
Any talk of “….to be the best club in Scotland, to be financially sound and to compete in Europe” is just meaningless. Any semi educated person has long moved on from such drivel.
You have a job to do, do it or move aside and let somebody else in who can.
Unfortunately Nawrocki wasn’t a success at Celtic as I particularly like the Polish players we have had at Celtic over the years.
It was empotimised at a game at Easter Road where his lack of pace was exposed in turn affecting his overall game. If memory serves me right he was hooked in that game.
What we are seeing now is confirmation that Celtic structurally is broken and in particular recruitment is a shambles with Nicholson praying he doesn’t need to talk to agents or the club. He is that incompetent he highlighted his own incompetence whilst in the rebel county.
Other players want to leave and will, suspect there will 1 or 2 late surprises with offers for most of our international brigade. Funny how Nicholson and the one dimensional beancounter always get these deals over the line – especially late in the day like Idah, Kyogo etc leaving no time for replacements. Of course no forward thinking and have players in early — rather grow the shekel stockpile whilst Rome burns.
It’s strange that CQN does not come with ideas on how to improve the situation rather pay homage to the guru Mark Lawwell and the disposed emperor who put him in place while the mute shrugged his shoulders.
It’s of course left to the discontented fans groups who are fragmented. This can all change in a heartbeat as Desmond relying on the incompetent Nicholson managing ins/outs is a recipe for disaster. If the Ibrox Club wanted to appoint someone to damage Celtic, Nicholson would be a dream. O’Neill saved us last season , this close season feels pivotal for Celtic now with 6 months wasted and no structural improvements at the club in place or planned.
Failure will unite the fans and Celtic will be a very toxic place until regime change takes place. There is still time — however priority no 1 is replace Nicholson. Desmond knows his time his up — probably got some other shit to clean up.
If Dane Murray is above you in the central defence pecking order it’s tine to start thinking about another career.
AN DÚN on 17TH JULY 2026 12:33 PM
Two weeks of preseason was enough for MoN to move Nawrocki on.
“But what I said to him is that I’m going to have a look at some of the matches that he played while he was out on loan. That’s the best way for me to make some sort of judgment in real games.”
“Then that’s a conversation he would have. But really, while his career’s going now, he doesn’t want to get stalled here by sitting and being third or fourth-choice centre half.”
VB – I was thinking exact same
Murray has physique but not much else on evidence to date.
Seemed to me that Gus and Maik were too slow to play in a defensive line parked near the half way line ( opposite problem to Harald Brattback). ,Our elite manager at the time didnt spot this but hey he could palm it off as a club signing.
Typical bac sliding garbage in my opinion.
HH
I honestly thought that you would have gotten past the everything is Brendan’s fault by now, sadly it seems that he is living rent free in your head Paul, sad really when you think about it.
If Maik Nawrocki is more of a “Backs to the wall” type defender….I’d imagine that due to our severe lack of transfer activity….he is exactly the type that we will require this season…as it looks as though most of our “in game play” will probably be played in our own half this coming season….
I wonder what excuses our host P67 be posting this time NEXT year….probably still be all Brendan’s fault..
I worry because MON thinks Dane Murray is better than Rocky.
Dane Murray
AKA… ULCC 🥴
If the Scottish Premiership is so un attractive to players I would ask the question, how did Hearts almost win it with the huge number they bought last season?
We are being treated like fools. Let’s hope the stadium is empty tomorrow…..
Good afternoon CQN
What a glorious day to be a Celtic fan.
Joes11 @ 1:37pm yesterday
Thank you for your kind post.
Simple pleasures and all that.
https://x.com/CelticFC/status/2053584613352620394/mediaviewer
We were all head over heels in that moment.
Except Daizen of course …
… for whom it was the other way round
For an extra 1.5 million we got Trusty ( who can run) AND who we would get roughly 10-12 million for
Nawrocki will be away for possibly 3 million…
I watched him against Sporting…one attempted clearance in particular caught my eye…straight to Sporting player on the edge of the 18 yard line !!
Not that he’s any worse than Murray mind but Murray can run but equally as poor an injury record
vale bhoy on 17th July 2026 12:11 pm
Comforting to know that our chief transfer negotiator has just told anyone who is interested that he doesn’t know how to negotiate.
——
Interesting VB.
I missed that quote in the summary issued by the AICSC.
Can you share a link to that quote ?
Is Mark Lawwell still out of work ? Has the man genuinely went from head of recruitment to the golf course for life ?