For Celtic, summertime business is every bit as important as the more traditional cup finals and league deciders held later in the season. We face qualifers for Champions League or Europa League group stage, which define our financial health and desirability as a potential employer.
The most important achievement was recorded on Wednesday when we qualified for the Champions League, but now we’re there, how prepared will we be?
Seven players left the squad, Daryl Murphy, who had already spent two years out on loan, Thomas Rogne and Paddy McCourt, who rarely saw first team action last season, and Tony Watt, who seems to be less effective than he was in the opening weeks of last season, and is now out on loan.
More importantly, Gary Hooper, Kevlin Wilson and Victor Wanyama all left, three players who were instrumental in our European victories last season.
Hooper is a textbook big game player who scored home and away against Spartak Moscow but he missed the home win over Barcelona and scarcely got a sniff of the ball home and away to Benfica, or in the Camp Nou, where his role as a penalty box poacher was less effective.
Kelvin Wilson had a disappointing first season at Celtic but as last season progressed there was a noticeable rise in appreciation of his talents. He had an exemplary Champions League campaign.
Victor Wanyama was the most effective central midfield player Celtic have had for some considerable time. We saw little of Roy Keane at Celtic but in Wanyama, you could see a player with the potential to go as far in the game. He is young and still has lots to add to his game, concentration, for a start, but we saw him grow from a place on the substitutes’ bench to a £12m player in 18 months.
It surprised a few that Victor (along with Gary) went to a team often found at the wrong end of England’s top flight, but he is still potential. The acclaim he received at Celtic is similar to that bestowed on Liam Miller nine years ago, whose Champions League performances were breath-taking. I still can’t fathom what happened to Miller but I hope Victor continues to improve; if he does, he could appear in the Camp Nou as a home player.
21-year-old Israeli central midfielder Nir Biton looks like a straight replacement for Wanyama. I don’t know enough about any of the new recruits yet to put my name to them but on paper, Nir works. At 6’5” he continues our current tradition of signing players born to shoot hoops, as well as wear them. A trial at Manchester City fell apart amid a diplomatic incident involving his nationality. He was going to make a move to a Champions League team at some point and, for the player, Celtic will look like an excellent option.
There was a moment during THAT game at Fir Park in 2005 when Craig Bellamy tore up the turf with the ball before looking up for someone to accept his cross, only to throw his arms up in frustration that there was no one in the box. Having one fast player is just not effective.
We’ve had pace-merchant James Forrest for a few years but we don’t play a speed-based game to suit his talents. With fellow-sprinter Derk Boerrigter also in the team now one of the things I know Celtic were looking for in a striker was pace, which is what I expect to see from Teemu Pukki.
Much of our Champions League game will be about playing counter-attacking football so we have to recruit for this model.
Teemu has been playing a supporting role for Schalke since they played against him, then signed him, from HJK Helsinki two years ago, but we have not had a striker who could claim a regular starting place in that company in nine years. He is another one who, on paper, works for me.
Amido Balde has been given some protection from too much responsibility and exposure to allow him to settle into the club, city and language, Celtic is a lot different from Vitoria Guimaraes. I heard that, like Wanyama during his first season, he’ll be allowed to settle into life as a Celtic player.
Virgil van Dijk was simply delicious against Dundee United yesterday. He has height, build, speed, can run with the ball and can pass. Build a defence around him. Steven Mouyokolo is one of those gambles managers like to take on players, who were once lauded but have had injury or other blemishes on their record. Most don’t work but we’ll soon find out if Steven has overcome his injury problems.
Derk Boerrigter has skill and pace. He is another one recruited with Champions League football in mind (not to face 10 defenders in the SP), a competition he has already performed well in for Ajax.
The comment was made to me that the players coming in were uninspiring compared to the three key players who left but while I could contest that, there doesn’t seem much point. We recruited Hooper and Wilson from the lower leagues in England, and Wanyama as a teenager from a small Belgian club. It’s not what you know about a player when he signs that counts……..
For years we have been encouraging Celtic to scout better markets and find value. They have been doing this to great effect in recent seasons. The gap between where we were last season and one stage further in the Champions League was enormous. To bridge it will take a while during which time we need to make every pound work.
Enjoy the ride.
Tomorrow we’ll talk money. In short, while I blogged a couple of weeks ago illustrating the circa £17m operational gap we have before Champions League or player trading income (i.e. we are not a rich club), notions that we are anywhere near being a poor club is laughable.
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Soccer Guy @usasoccerguy 6m
Injured again. Jack Wheelchair exits the court.
Just heard from my Madrid source…….Gareth Bale booked
in for a ear tuck operation…….they reckon they can get another
yard out of the lad
aerodynamicsCSC.
The whole Hooper thing is funny as paul said we brought him in from england lower league and he was no one at that time we only has Stokes, Sammy and can’t remember who else but since the Trident we have struggled to have a consistant striker, Zurawski, lasssad, miku,Murphy,killen, fortune,Bangura, I’m sure there are others. so like Hooper we will just have to find an other Hooper, We may already have him in Pukki, Skippy was consistant but like stokes was hot and cold.
tbh i would have rather brought on Watt instead of Amido just saying.
KLV
The irony of those criticising the signings for bein uninspiring are the same ones who wud have said couple of yrs ago why have we signed a champion ship centre half, a mid fielder from team never heard of in Belgium that had we ever played team we wud arrogantly assume we wud take 6 off an a striker whose highest club played for was scunthorpe. Yet we sign 2 dutch men, a guy from bundeslega and an u 21 captain who is highly regarded together with young striker who has scored more goals in a better lge than Scotland.
Yet the experts an the football manager players amongst us are unimpressed. Snap judgement an knee jerk reactions an success immediately are the make up of a Celtic fan these days.
With another 2 days this window cud have went better but on paper we have got good players more suited to European game. Maybe give it 6 mths b4 judging?
Snake
The problem yesterday was we didn’t create chances. What difference would a world-class striker have made? Lack of creativity (who apart from Commons?) is our problem.
The Arsenal goal where Giroud attacks the near post is something the manager + coaches should be working on with the players at Lennoxtown.
It is something we quite simply do not do as a team.
Snake
You also mentioned Filip Twardzik. What on earth has happened to him. The official site has never given details of his injury.
Very disappointed to see Tony Watt has been shipped out. IMO he’s s better player than Amido Balde.
Celtic paid Scunthorpe the same money for Hooper as we have just done for Pukki. So it was hardly a gamble.
HH
scotlands shame
Totally we do knee jerk, The club is run differently than it used to be, There is no saying 6m is guarenteed success in spending lots of money, the EPL is proving that week in week out, players on big money don’t try as hard for me as they think and have already made it. You can’t make a player a millionaire and not expect it to change him. So we seem to sign players who want it still and give them a stage to show what they can do and both the player and the club are happy only thing is if we get attached to them and they move on.
KLV
Gary Hooper cost us 4 times what Stokes cost us
HH
Paul 67,
assume CFC know about Definition of SFA “business day” as per 5 way agreement? sfmonitor.org/2013/08/mr-green-and-opportunity-knocks-for-aberdeen/comment-page-32/#comment-62623 …
I think Watts loan spell could be the making of him, he needs to experience regular first team and if his training is as bad as rumoured then he’ll find out its no just people picking on him.
I think you can sum our transfer policy at the moment in one sentence –
You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs…
and I have no problem with that as long as we meet our only real targets that matter – win the league and qualify for the CL.
I think we took a huge and unnecessary gamble on the CL this year. I’d be surprised if we did it again.
Sorry to se Tony Watt go on loan but I hope its the making of him. For me the lad really has got huge potential.
Awe Naw
Stokes was bought for circa £1m.
Back in now ……. Good old debate going on …….. The anti-boarders haven’t yet quoted PL….
“We don’t need rankers” …….but I am sure they will mention it soon…..!!!!
….and DD was using the old ” for Ceasar is an honourable man” adage….
Anyway, if the Law, Media and BDO etc don’t deliver justice, we will all have a decision to make (every fan of every team) …….do we want watch sport every week, or do we want to sit and watch a bunch cheating / corrupt barstewards sticking their 2 fingers up to every football fan in Scotland……. I am convinced sevco will join their zombie club in the not too distant future but if a sevco5 or 6 ever does make it back into the SPL, that’s when action BY THE FANS will have to come into play…… No SB sales / empty stadia for a couple of months would make the football establishment sit up and pay attention….any Board of any individual Club will not be able to take on the establishment ….. we need to be patient to see what the next few months brings ……. Meanwhile, let’s enjoy Celtic’s success…..
Google translate unfortunately does have Carragher to English.
I’ve no problems in where we sign players or the supposed quality, even the odd gamble.
But I do feel we could / should have done things much better. Ajax as an example, ensured they had qualified before selling two players – yet we sold three before we qualified…why the gamble. EPL clubs will throw even more money about as the window draws to a close in a mad scramble to appease their fans.
Any player approached who said they would wait until knowing if we qualified should have been crossed off the list immediately and move on. Yet we found ourselves chasing last minute loan deals…surely such approaches should have been well down the line if we had done out homework properly.
Not like we were caught unawares by the sales of Wilson, Wanyama or Hooper we had plenty of prior notice. Hopefully it will be much smoother transition next season.
valentinesday
Just heard from my Madrid source…….Gareth Bale booked
in for a ear tuck operation…….they reckon they can get another
yard out of the lad
aerodynamicsCSC.
————-
Bale had his ears done last summer, if he gets them done again they’ll be inside his head.
79 caps
No idea but I liked the look of Twardzik. He needs more game time as well.
Another thing is Jackson Irvine appears to be playing centre half at Kilmarnock – is that his best position?
For me, We just need to take chances we create. KC has started the season slow (scored a cracker on wed) but he looks heavy just now. the spl teams pack in and sit in and the ref breaks up play as much as possible going by the past couple of games. The MD looks a funny shape to me as well, Rogic may fix this but I think JL has been very poor so far and Broony has been playing for both players. Strikers still need chances and support, I think we can be slow on creating. I hope Sammy back and Derk and Pukki we should be countering faster which plays to JF strengths as well.
We will see, Utd yesterday was always going to be a hard game after wed and so early in the season. But 1st half we should have been a couple up.
KLV
Up The Dubs
doesn’t
the long wait is over
Frogs exactly.
KLV
Liverpool Man U game dire, Man U will stick with Moyes as they are that type of club but can’t see him winning anything with them.
Poor game, think there were 3 Man U players booked for pulling, Gary Neville said if you pull you get booked.
Arsenal Spurs game both teams committed a foul by pulling the player back, no bookings. Got to love refs, awful everywhere.
Ten men
750k
Hooper was 2.4m so it does not alter my assessment that although Hooper was from a lower league. It was a high price to pay. So less of a gamble in my opinion.
HH
67heaven…,
I don’t believe you’ve read my resolution, if that’s your opinion about any club taking them on.
I’ve outlined the rules that any club can utilise to make them accountable. The same rules Gregory Loannidis identified a wee while ago.
canamalar prays Oscar can do it again
16:24 on
1 September, 2013
Auldheid…,
Your argument
“Football Clubs are a strange beast, as an organisation they don’t quite fit into the – not for profit category, yet although many are PLCs, their main aims & objectives isn’t maximising profit.”
Is flawed for one simple reason, it is a PLC’s legal responsibility to maximise profit, I think it was Mike in Toronto who has been trying to get this discussion off the ground, he used the example of a ice hockey team who have not won a trophy in years but keep making a big profit and that’s all they are responsible to do.
=============================
Actually it was Chairboy but it does raise an interesting point.
Although constitued as a PLC and conforming to those written requirements, is a PLC the right format for football and is their job to make money for the company?
Given the big business nature of football I think it is right to have folk with big business experience on the Board, especially if they are Celtic supporters with a feeling for the club.
But are they really all about profit and making money and who is the money being made for?
I do not see football Boards of any hue in the money making game for shareholders. I see them as the governors in a mechanical sense that streams income into where it is needed to pay players to turn out for thir club, in our case Celtic, and entertain me.
I recognise the high cost of the player I would like to see every week and that this drags up what I have to pay for the perhaps less than entertaining player I do watch, but I see no point hammering the governor because of the price of players.
However if they as governors were creaming off into dividends from profits more than a share of that income I provide to be entertained I’d want to know why.
Which is perhaps at the source of Chairboys point. Most PLCs do not antagonise their shareholders by pushing up dividends because those shareholder unlike in football do not have the same emotional investment in the company,like the dividend AND paying more in dividends does not negatively affect the product.
A football club PLC (although Arsenal fans might disagree) is not in the business of making money. It is more of a not for profit industry and perhaps that is the way we should be set up as long as we do not lose out on the business experience to make the right money making decisions to pay players to entertain me to a standard I am happy with.
UpThe Dubs
Nir Biton looks a slightly taller skinnier version of Rogic, much the same age as well so if Biton is to be a starting player then Rogic looks like he’ll be wasted for another season, really not helping his development.
canamalar prays oscar can do it again
17:01 on 1 September, 2013
I like Tony Watt and hope to solves the problem he actually has ….this situation reminds e a wee bit of the George Connolly scenario ……. you can just sense something isn’t right
Barcabhoy 16:15 (from previous artcile)
They also extended the January 2009 window (yes, “that” one!) to 2nd Feb. Also notice that we signed Michael Gray on 1st Sept 2003.
Jim Spence read out a statement from them on Friday. Don’t remember the exact wording, but it basically said they are doing it the way they have always done it, which is plainly untrue.
It’s bad enough that they messed up in the first place. It’s the lies and attempted cover-up that’s worse.
F The Dubs.
Canalamar
The following is why I see PLCS in football as governors rather than profit makers.
“The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That’s how I see football, that’s how I see life.” Bill Shankley. Liverpool FC.
A curious phenomenon has happened in professional football over the last ten years, and it is only now beginning to reveal itself. The phenomenon is that the players have become the owners of the game. What defines an owner is their ability to dictate terms and so the world’s best players and those who hang on to their coat tails, agents and next tier down players, now dictate the terms. They are football’s new owners.
How has this happened for it would be impossible in normal business? It happened because the player’s paymasters, the support, set no price on their desire for glory and success. The paymasters have become the slaves of glory and football is paying the ultimate cost.
Apart from the desire for glory at any price another reason for the phenomenon is the working man’s thinking that a player, like any working man, has the right to negotiate as high a reward for his labour as he can. As a left leaning Glaswegian who has had to strike for improved conditions in normal business, I subscribe to that notion and paid my dues to defend that right. However football is not like normal business. In normal business if a worker negotiates a wage that makes the company uncompetitive because the rise exceeds the income it will generate, that company will eventually go out of business. Thus a reality wage ceiling is in place. This is a good thing because it means the company can continue to offer employment to all its workers and continue to serve its customers.
However in recent football history the influx of TV and sugar daddy money has enabled a wage to be offered that goes way beyond the business’s ability to sustain, but unlike normal business, clubs do not, by and large, go out of business. They find ways of reforming and carry on, but at a cost to those players not in the top earning bracket (or to workers in other companies who served them). It has meant smaller squads, fewer players able to earn
It is a curious socialist philosophy that supports a player’s right to get as much as he can from the game, but ignores the consequences for his fellow players/workers (and other workers), without whom there would be no game.
Modern football reminds me of a description of a scene from hell where a visitor looks into one room and sees an emaciated group around a table on which is set a large pot full of stew. They cannot eat because their arms have been set straight at the elbow and elongated so that they cannot get a spoon in their mouths. It is a miserable place.
Then the visitor goes upstairs and enters a similar room with occupants similarly handicapped, but where everyone is well fed and contented. “How can this be?” he asks his guide. “Well downstairs all their energies are spent in the nigh impossible task of feeding their insatiable hunger, whilst up here they simply feed each other.”
The thankless job of managing the downstairs room falls to the custodians of clubs, but their hands are tied by the players’ real paymasters, the support, demanding the custodians throw more food into the room, rather than teach the occupants the benefit of feeding each other for the good of all.
Not all players and agents are greedy men, John Kennedy’s magnificent gesture to give his testimonial money to famine relief is a demonstration of this, and there are other players who also carry out acts of charity. However, overall, it is players who exploit the support using the support’s desire for success to demand from custodians wages that starve lower reaches of the game. There is more than enough finance to satisfy both players and supporters needs, it just needs to be distributed more equitably.
Hopefully this phenomenon will end when the unconscious paymasters – the support, who should be the owners, waken up and realise that they are being exploited, not by the custodians of clubs, but by their fellow workers the players. When this realisation finally dawns about who currently owns football a consensual wage ceiling might emerge to allow football to again become the people’s game. There is no natural ceiling to ensure wealth generation is preserved or that the wealth created is more fairly distributed. One must be created.
At some point the age old class struggle of exploited worker versus owner will be repeated, except the battle will be between a more responsible support and the new owners of soccer, the players.
These are not to be confused with the players of the past, fellow workers exploited by then club owners. Players like Bobby Evans, Willie Fernie, Jimmy Johnstone, Bobby Murdoch etc. These guys and their fellow professionals were working men all their playing lives.
Those days, however, have gone.
16 roads
why such vitriol against such a magnificent team
Jackson Irvine plays with his head up. Tony Watt plays with his head down.
Paul67:
Like most – CQN opinion/ interpretation it’s governed by the Board’s strategy – problem is IMO nobody actually knows what their strategy is or how it’s defined.
Much of what comes out of CP is so open-ended/ ambiguous that even with the assistance of annual accounts it’s difficult to assess; short/ medium/ long term aims (including dealings in the transfer market pre-CL Qualification).
GTTF
We all know the SFA are institutionally corrupt but clubs have known since last year when this window would close.