We spent just off £30m this window on Arne Engels, Auston Trusty, Adam Idah, Paulo Bernardo, Viljami Sinisalo, Luke McCowan and the loan fee for Alex Valle, while Kasper Schmeichel arrived on a free. There is a lot to like.
Early this window, I was worried that Brendan would veer off plan and concentrate players in their mid-20s – a short-term gain with long-term pain. When Sinisalo arrived, we knew the plan was still in place.
Viljami is now a full Finland international with around 80 appearances in senior football. He will understudy Kasper for at least this season but he is working with the best in the business in Stevie Woods. Two years from now, if not earlier, he should be first choice and ready for the challenge.
Today, Arne gets all the attention for that record-breaking fee. What we bought in him is mostly potential. He has the potential to grow into an established fixture in the Belgium midfield. Please remember, he is a few days shy of his 21st birthday; even Matt O’Riley had periods where form slipped during his brief 2 ½ years here.
Arne will be the same. You and I have the responsibility to nurture his talent and make sure Celtic Park is a place of growth for young players. Forget about the fee paid, it is almost certainly too much for where is he. Think about Arne as the Belgium midfielder of the future.
We know what we are going to get from Paulo Bernardo, who did well in our biggest games last season. The same is true of Luke McCowan – value and more at that price. One of the reasons Adam Idah is now a Celtic player is that his preseason did not go to plan. Consequentially, he is a bit short of fitness right now (you may have noticed in Paisley last week). That will change soon enough. He is a solid striker and a good alternate to Kyogo.
Net spend in the EPL was down 40% from last year’s window (2024: £627M, 2023: £1078m). Financial Sustainability Regulations and the on-going breaches of EPL rules have taken effect. Clubs need to live within their means and if they aspire to compete in Uefa competitions, they have to live within a budget restriction which tightens from last season through to next season.
The clearest manifestation of that is Ivan Toney. The England international striker was sold for £40m, and Brentford only achieved that figure by going to Saudi Arabia. No English club was prepared to pay as much.
In this context, Celtic achieving a new Scottish sale record with Matt O’Riley going for £26m is interesting. Not only is it new ground for Celtic, but the comparative with England is significantly better. My hunch is that net spend in England and elsewhere will continue to soften next year as stricter rules come into force. Our money should be more valuable going forward, our players, less so.
As we mentioned earlier this week, Matt O’Riley is textbook case of how to recruit and develop a football player. Do more of the, please, Celtic. He was our most financially valuable asset, but I expect we will be able to fill that gap easier than we would if Kyogo, Carter-Vickers, Hatate or McGregor left. It was a remarkable deal, in so many ways.
Your football club is in a great position, managed on a tier one level. Transfer windows work in a consistent and predictable manner. Anyone who fails to understand this, self-identifies as an undisciplined child. Think of yourself, if no one else.
Bring your A Game tomorrow. Confidence wins nothing. You, me and the men on the park in green and white will have to perform if we are going to collect the points.
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Well the pre-game drinks were the highlight of today’s visit to VALE Park. With 14 new players it may take a few games to gel. Otherwise it’s going to be a long season.
My first game that I can remember was the 1961 cup final replay 0-2 against Jock’s Dunfermline.
I lived in Toryglen so it was a 10 minute walk. It’s the one and only game that my dad took us to.
He was most definitely an armchair fan.
Barry Ferguson urges Rangers to address the one Celtic star that’s been the main threat in recent meetings
Kurtis Leyland
By Kurtis Leyland
Sports and Trends Writer
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yet again, this idiot is inciting them to target Calmac. Is he not braking some sort of law?
The bedwetters window, the glacial pace or judge at the end window, get them in early or market forces window The what did Brendan say and what did Brendan mean window. The Adam Idah window or the Arne Engels window, the end of the strategy, the change in the strategy, the lack of strategy window. Brendan takes control, Brendan has no control Brendan has some control. The Putsch or the status quo. The Brendan happiness index window.
I think judging windows the day after they close isnt particularly helpful. We’re encouraged to talk about whether the team/squad has been improved compared to before the window, with Adam Idah being one of the players who was already here. January was a disaster, but we signed a player who heavily contributed to the title and became our record signing, and our best player so far this season, so probably a six month horizon is better, maybe a year before we start talking in absolutes.
What we do know:
We broke our transfer fee record twice
We spent more on players than in any window for the last 20 years
We spent all the money we received for Matt O’Riley
First team keeper replaced
Back up keeper replaced
Left back replaced
Centre back replaced
Two midfield out, record signing in to replace a record signing out and an improvement on Iwata (or whats the point)
Two loan signed loans made permanent, one for a record fee, another for a bargain fee.
Too early to make a judgement on the individuals we’ve never seen before, but of the ones we have seen in Celtic shirts, I think the fee for Idah is very toppy, for Bernardo it feels like a bargain. Again, time will tell whether thats the case, and whether they will turn out to be value.
Squad management. Transfermarkt has us as 7 in 9 out. I would have liked to see a bigger squad with more potential not a smaller one with less, like the successful teams we’ll be up against shortly. Big squad, clever use of the loans market lots of trading, but we seem to want to take a different approach. The pressure is now on both Brendan to deliver a very decent profit on Idah and Arne and, unfortunately, on both players. Arne has to not only justify his transfer fee immediately as our record fee, the pressure is also on to become a 30m player.
Development. That we need to generate income from player trading is set in stone. Concentrate all your spend on one or two development players after talking about the value he can add them – three 7-8m players bringing in 30-40 – has put Brendan under the spotlight. We can’t go two years without selling a player for Matt O’Riley money if we arent selling several for less. We have to plan a couple of years in advance, Brendan doesnt if he sticks to his plan of being here for 3 years. Like wise squad size, reducing squad size might be good for the football department but I doesnt help with development of future sales. Buy and loan out, dont sell and loan in.
Brendan backed (whatever that means) I would say without doubt. Transfer fee broken twice, 3 players in our top 7 most expensive in the last 20 years. The last time we broke our transfer record by 2.5m Brendan was gone in sixth months, so theres no guarantee it will make him happy, but I would suggest we’re safe until at least the next window (sarcasm). It does seem to have become a feature of supporting Celtic, its becoming exhausting trying to work out his mood from one presser to the next but it keeps us all entertained I guess
A clear change over the course of this window is the atmosphere in and around the club. We’re talking more about personalities, strategies recruitment and the business of Celtic than ever before. A Summer of argument, yet we ended with record sales, record spends, broken transfer records and a team thats playing as well as any I can remember in a long time.
I have never had a problem with Brendan abilities as a coach and football manager, he is an excellent Celtic manager, I dont subscribe to the idea that his achievements are diminished by a poor Sevco. I have been consistent about my problem with him, though, during his last time here, when he walked out and when his name was first floated as a candidate as our manger last year. I can also understand that he aims to get his best Celtic team on the pitch he can while he’s here, even if it is, as I suggest, about a legacy and not about Celtic first and foremost. But I do not agree with his methods. I think they create division, we could end up with a disfunctional organisation with narrow aims that are decided by the football manager, one who has a record of walking on out on our club when he doesn’t get his way. We’re told how great it is that he’s calling Michael Nicholson out, in-jokes with the mainstream media we use to hate so much about the Matt O’Riley money and the lack of european ambition. We won the double, are looking forward to the CL, playing great, and have broken our transfer record twice, spent more money than in the last 20 years and yet this summer saw the most unhappy transfer window I can remember, with our Chairman being verbally abused on the way to a game we won comfortably. I think Brendan’s language added to the toxicity he said he was trying to avoid, the reaction to it on here certainly suggested it was the case.
I think with Brendan we’re in danger of doing exactly what the board is accused of doing – taking our domestic record as proof of success while underperforming in Europe. There’s nothing in his European record that suggests he’s better than four of the coaches we’ll face in the champions league. Last season he had the worst European record of any of the coaches we faced, theres a pretty good argument that in European terms we’re overpaying him – Sarri and Slot are better coaches and were being paid about the same or less. I appreciate the difficulty of Celtic attracting coaches of their or even his standard, and even if we were to attract them we’d have to overpay but the point remains – I dont think Brendans standing in the game warrants the sort of blind acceptance there seems to be that if we give him what he wants he’ll progress us to where we need to be.
I think if we want to behave like a proper grown up European club we need to start behaving like one – resist the urge to turn Celtic into Brendan Rodgers FC because of his domestic football success. If change is needed get the best person into do it, not the one closest to hand
We’re about to face four “better” teams coached by managers with better pedigrees in Europe. Atalanta, reigning Europa League winners have been coached by Gasperini (salary net €3m) since 2016, he’s 66 but all his achievements have come at Atalanta while working within a very well-defined and strictly enforced business model. Dortmund, champions league finalists pay their manager €3.5m, he’s only just been appointed permanent coach after being interim, he is a coach, has no control over the business of the club. Marco Rose is paid €4.5m, he works for the Red Bull organisation, who fit their players, coaches and administration staff into a very strict structure. It works, to a point, theyre a 15 year old club with a Uefa coefficient ranking of 13, but they seem to have a celling of the knockouts in the Cl and they have never won anything in their history. But everyone at the club, in the whole organisation fits into the structure. The coach does just that, coach. Same at Villa, owned by a sports management group, strategy, recruitment processes, negications, all done within a well-defined structure much of it by the superstar of technical directors“Monchi”. The best Europa league manger in its history with no control over who he signs or why. “Better” European managers with very little or no control over strategy or recruitment.
I’d be interested to see any of the other clubs who have a higher UEFA co-efficient than us who operate the sort of model thats being suggested. Ignore the successes of others at our peril, look at their structures, and learn.
I dont see anything in what Brendan says about strategy and recruitment to suggest he knows any better than the board or the clubs with the sort of strategy and structure he is opposed to. Theres no consistency beyond “let me do it.” Being an enemy of the board isnt enough, laughing with the press about European ambitions isnt enough, threatening to walk if he doesnt get what he wants isnt enough. I dont see anything that suggests giving him what he wants does anything other than giving him what he wants. In 6 months we’ve abandoned the “obvious” need for experienced quality, now the strategy is for a small number of expensive development players. We need a restructuring of the recruitment department and then we’re told we signed Idah because he was aware of the player, and that he signed Schmeichel because he’d worked with him before. When Brendan talks about him restructuring the recruitment I cant help but imagine this means more Idahs and fewer “failures” identified by the team. Not a stretch to imagine any restructuring he does will involve more power being concentrated in his hands. We need to know that isnt the case, that he isnt building an empire by stealth. Dont complain about one man having too much control and then replace him with another.
Having said all of the above I will park all serious judgement of this window until the end of the season, I cant ask for the January window to be judged after six months and judge this one now. Likewise with Celtic and Brendan’s performance in the Champions League, nothing until February. In terms of development of signed players, several years, not one. But everyone’s performance must be judged against their commitments, otherwise we’re beginning to talk about an Empire which nobody wants.
I feel your pain …
@Marspapa..Anytime Sir ,you would love the View of the Bens.
Especially Ben Bowie lol…Enjoy the match (i know it’s hard to relax during it).
A nice hammering dished out to thems would be a nice finish to a great week…
With the nice weather to be around tomorrow ,I shall head up Knocknairs….
Tidy up 6 graves early doors and that should help the pre match nerves….
H.H
and again
Not sure if anyone read this https://theanalyst.com/2024/08/champions-league-2024-25-fixture-difficulty-group-stage. I wondered how it was possible to calculate who had the easiest draw and who got the hardest draw. Well here you go.
Will Connor Barron be the ‘new hardman’ tomorrow?
https://youtu.be/hqXytghO2mk
Celtic40ME,
What I find missing from your otherwise pretty well thought out post is that Brendan was the guy who shattered the myth of invincibility surrounding Man City when we last seriously played them in the CL. Until that game no EPL team had the slightest clue how to begin dealing with them and his approach became the template. I think that you might be underestimating him somewhat. Just a thought.
Swiss
Here’s a thought….
Get oot and enjoy the hun skelping weekend sun.
Backgardendrinkscsc
A satisfying conclusion to the summer window. The squad is less bloated and looks a little firmer. The club has done a great job of moving players we didn’t want for reasonable fees. Matt will be sorely missed but we have to live with it. That’s the deal. He had outgrown Scottish football.
I estimate a profit of about 10 million euros from player trading. So please, don’t be telling me that Celtic have spent £30m on player recruitment. Transfer windows are a source of revenue for Celtic, that is the long-established business model, one that the club excels at executing. Brighton and Hove Albion funded our recruitment with some help from a few others. Celtic did not spend one dime of their own money.
The next set of accounts will reveal about £100m cash reserves. Following another profitable window and another season of UCL revenue, we will probably be closer to £150m 12 months from now. What is all this money for? A new South Stand? This isn’t a complaint, I’d rather hoard cash than fund debt, but Celtic are so good at this, how does it all end?
I don’t know much about Luke McCowan as a player, but their Highland Toffee was second to none.
MISTERTAXIMAN
If I’m not mistaken, with the sale of Celtic PlC…
Swiss
GGH: Is it still possible to get McCowan’s Highland Toffee? I used to love that.
Gary
Talking about toffee – even by their standard Everton had a dreadful meltdown. 2 up with 4 mins plus added time left they managed to lose
2-3
I don’t know much about Luke McCowan as a player, but their Highland Toffee was second to none.
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many dentists will also agree. those toffees pulled out so many fillings that dentists could buy bigger cars just by sorting out weans toffee teeth 🦷🍬
Guessing none of our newer players will start tomorrow, but would expect to see a few of them on the bench, and certainly McCowan is no stranger to Celtic Park so could get some game time. Aberdeen could go top later this evening and if we win tomorrow we will also be five points clear of our more likely rivals. Who is going to be nervous, the team that can go five clear or the one looking at going five behind this early in the season? Rhetorical question. Brendan has if anything created competition for places and that has got to be good for the squad, altlhough obviously we do want our newer players to get game time as soon as possible, hopefully before our first CL game at home in 2-3 weeks.
so we are currently 2nd in the league, and havent got any points in the CL yet?
if thats not good enough reason to sack the bored then i dont know what is
gotta get them to celtic park
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2024/0831/1467661-choctaw-ireland-sculpture/
According to Mr Patullo of Scotsman fame, it is Celtic carrying the pressure into this game……
I’m fairly certain there are a couple of GIFs from Still Game in response to that….
Quite the game of rugby there between South Africa and New Zealand 👏👏
Unless I’m mistaken Celtic are still top of the league……
Unless I’m mistaken Celtic are still top of the league……
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but in running bacause the Ship Shoggers are currently drawing then they are top
Loved the look on wee McCowans face when he walked out the tunnel. How many of us remember that feeling when we first went to paradise😂👍
I think he is going to be a great player for us.
All the best Luke, you are living the dream.
Hail Hail
Sean
Unless I’m mistaken Celtic are still top of the league……
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but in running bacause the Ship Shoggers are currently drawing then they are top
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or maybe not 😀
Luke McCowan (born 9 December 1997) is a Scottish professional footballer who plays as a midfielder or left winger for Scottish Premiership club Celtic.
Early life
McCowan was born in Greenock, Scotland[1] and attended Notre Dame High School.[1]
Career
Youth career
In 2015, McCowan won the West of Scotland Title with East End United F.C.[1] While at the Ayr United’s youth teams, he had a busy day as he had to be up at 5am to work as a lifeguard at Waterfront Leisure Complex before attending gym sessions in the afternoon, then driving for over an hour to train with Ayr.[1]
https://x.com/Alan_Morrison67/status/1829830481354870905/photo/1
what a weird build up to a glasgow derby !
On behalf of my wife – where can you find a good sunday roast in glasgow?
GARYGILLESPIESHAMSTRING re: sleeping in.
P67 caught me out!
Dundee v Celtic last season
MissGFTB raving about Beck as he was matching Maeda’… not many do, I didn’t know who he was but I said “that bam with the blond hair is everywhere” = Luke McCowan … he is the one signing I would love to be brilliant … Barry Robson, Paul Hartley, Pat McGinlay or even Mikey Galloway … getting to Celtic in your mid 20s when maybe you thought it might not have happened
Hope the rest of the new signings do well as well obviously
where can you find a good sunday roast in glasgow?
that would be maeda on the rangers defence
aberdeen are free on premier sport btw
Jackiemac 6.16pm
Blane Valley … an old CQN haunt :-)
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