Peter Lawwell’s statement with Celtic’s Interim Report has left Chris Sutton as puzzled and frustrated as many hoops supporters.
It seems that the Celtic Board shares the worries the lack of activity during the January transfer window- but no solutions have been offered.
The need for quality arrivals was heightened by the disastrous summer activities which saw 10 players arrive while Jota, Aaron Mooy and Carl Starfelt left the club.
None of the arrivals improved the Starting XI, Luis Palma has been the only one regularly selected but over the last two months his supply of goals and assists has dropped noticeably with the exception of two assists during the Scottish Cup win at Motherwell.
There seemed to be no change to the way the January window was treated, in the summer a replacement will be required for Joe Hart while Matt O’Riley is likely to attract the sort of offers that Celtic find difficult to resist. In August Starfelt, a current internationalist and regular in a treble winning side was sold for £4m to Celta Vigo.
It has all the ingredients for a perfect storm, after checking out the Interim Report Sutton told the Daily Record:
Peter Lawwell had nowhere to go after receiving Celtic’s interim report. He essentially acknowledged that everyone knew it, too, and quite a few of his remarks didn’t sit well with me.
To be really honest, I don’t think there were enough satisfactory responses to the important questions. primarily, the disappointment at not being able to bolster the team further. Although there was a collective admission of guilt, nothing changed, and the key question remains: why were these errors made?
Who has the blame? Although they’ll never admit it, there is responsibility somewhere if money were available, and that exposes Celtic to a great deal of criticism and conjecture.Identified targets were unavailable. Well identify more or some alternatives. Because, quite simply, are you telling me there wasn’t a single left-back out there available as better cover to Greg Taylor than Alexandro Bernabei? Come on.
Also, I’m not entirely sure what transfer activity being at its lowest in England for 10 years has to do with Celtic. Regardless of happenings in England, given Brendan Rodgers talked about needing to be braver in the market, Had they paid more money to purchase from the Premier League in the south anyway?
Less activity in England should make Celtic’s recruitment of players less competitive, while Ange Postecoglou’s advance work in completing and announcing the deals for Daizen Maeda, Reo Hatate, and Yosuke Ideguchi on December 31, 2021, disproved the notion that January is a difficult market.
Along with Matt O’Riley, two of those three additions were crucial to Celtic’s championship run that season, which earned them a spot in the Champions League group stage.It is hard to imagine Adam Idah and Nicolas Kuhn having the same influence at this point.
