Celtic's 2025/26 Summer transfer window: Stage: Blochairn hovering over the Panic button

It’s not even just the knockout ties.

I appreciate we’ve played in the Champions League a lot in that time period, and given the likes of AC Milan, Barcelona, and recently Bayern a good go.

It’s more the AEK Athens, Cluj, Maribor, Legia, Malmo, Ferencvaros etc in the qualifiers that still niggles away at me.

I mean, with all due respect, that’s an absolutely laughable list of teams to be losing 6 out of 6 qualifiers against in a relatively short time period, denying us multi millions in CL money.

There will obviously have been player and manager errors in these ties, but for me it all comes back to the slow, ponderous, risk averse, outdated recruitment strategy which has, and continues to hold the club back.

I’ve been beaten in to submission over the years with the way we do business, but I completely understand the concerns of others, irrespective of how early it is.

 

Well said.

In terms of the debate over if it’s too early to be * off about the window or not…we’ve seen this story too many times.

I understand the argument that it’s still quite early in the window. It absolutely is. But how many windows have we had in recent years that have just been the exact same?

Start with hope. Loads of rumours. One or two early signings. Then nothing for weeks. Manager says the same old pish “working hard in the background but nothing concrete yet” etc and so on.

There’s always the hope that maybe this window will be different. Until it isn’t.

How many years in a row did we go into CL qualifiers with glaring weaknesses in the team? A Mikey Johnston starting. Or Stephen Welsh. How many people have made the excuse that “we didn’t see their true ability because they didn’t get a full pre-season with us”? Well, maybe sign them before the last week of the window.

Why can’t, just once, with all our millions in the bank, we go out and get 3 or 4 good early signings in the door? We’ve still to replace our striker who left 6 months ago. We still have Liam Scales at LCB. Still got no pace or power in midfield. Still stuck with Yang on the wing.

The season starts in 3 weeks.

 

100%

 

Another good post. I think you speak for a lot of posters on here who feel as though we have all went through the same scenario year after year.

 

When I think of Celtic in CL qualifiers, the first thing I see is Nir Bitton swanning about at centre half.

Even the campaign we scraped through with Rodgers against Astana and Hapoel Beer Sheva, he was forced to start Saidy Janko and Eoghan O’Connell.

 

Good post and I don’t disagree with much of it. I am a similar age to yourself so seen similar teams growing up and periods starting with primary school in the 90’s largely getting beat by them. Then MoN being an icon as the man who came in and made us ultra competitive to their financially doped team, was in Seville as a young teenager. Watched Strachan’s team punch above its weight in Europe and that 3 in a row run.

One thing though is and it’s what makes me nervous about this window, I have watched the same senior leaders at the club fail to learn from similar mistakes that they made in the past in 2008/09, 2014/15 and 2015/16, 2019/20-2020/21 and were close to doing in 2023/24 and that’s failing to properly rejuvenate a team with first team quality when we have a winning side. It hasn’t always cost us that immediate season but more often than not it does eventually.

A lot is said about player trading profits but the club has also made an OPEX profit of between £18-40m before tax so £13.5m-30m (not exactly as we have capital tax allowance etc but roughly).

I would also say our average transfer spend over the period since Ange arrived is nearer £26m and during the same period we have brought in an average of £31.5m largely brought down by the 22/23 season although technically Jota’s sale happened then so from an accounting point of view it’s more evened out.

I do think we will spend some money before the window shuts I just hope this time we get at least 3 players from here ready make an immediate impact in the first team as I think going with the core of the same team from last season would be repeating the same mistakes I mentioned before.

 

Sick of talking about the changes in structure required...

It will take another league loss i fear before we make any changes required.

It is still early in the window though..

 

I have given up on the change in structure it is sorely needed but won’t happen. It never happened after the Covid season so I can’t see it. In addition, I actually fear what we would do if it was a Director of Football and head coach model. I could see the DoF being someone like Strachan for essentially someone to keep in line so it actually would be more like when Mark Lawwell was bringing players in again, with someone like Ronny as the head coach.

 

Totally spot on. Best post in this forum in last month.

 

Shivers down the spine stuff.

It really is completely unacceptable that we were in that position.

 

Guessing that is in relation to some of my posts the other day.

So just wanting to clarify what I was trying to say. In no way way I downplaying our achievement.

My post was in reply to a comment about us winning league by 17 points and people needing to calm down about squad strengthening.

Point I was trying to make but probably missed was the Huns having a better head to head record v us last season suggests the gap probably isn't as big as some think it is. It should be but it isn't. At some point they are gonna get a manger/ a squad / or a style of play that helps them consistently beat the rest of the league at which point we would very much be back in a title race. Thankfully it doesn't look like this latest revolution is gonna be it.

Apologies if post wasn't on reference to myself but just wanted to clarify what I was trying to say the other day in that I really don't think now is the time for anyone involved with the club to get complacent not do I think it's acceptable to just tread water this summer bcoz the manager is likely off next summer bcoz the last time we made that mistake a pretty average Hun team with a * manager managed to build enough consistency to cost us the 10

 

Our squad is dreadful on paper now....
Kuhn, Kyogo and MOR gone from the end of BR's first season and not one of them properly replaced in the squad yet.
Jota injured and the fact we are so average in centre midfield really doesn't help the look.
Scales and Trusty the cherries on top.

 

Tbf, I am excited about Nygren, Osmand and obviously having a winner and leader back, in KT is amazing..

Inamura too, could prove a smart piece of business as he looks very good on the ball..

Nygren proves it doesn't need to be £10m its more about experience and pedigree.. scored goals in European competition, fully capped for country, 2 goals in 4 Caps..

This is the calibre we need, starting players. And we need to bed them in for a potentially very tricky CL Qualifier..

 

* sake are we gonna leave it to the last minute to see what's available again

 

With brendan writing Jota off to after the new year then surely we are targeting 2 or 3 wingers ffs

 

It’s getting beyond ridiculous mate, surely we’ll see a few bits of quality come in this week i won’t hold my breath though.

 

Normally when I go to benidorm we sign players....

 

Maeda, Yang, Forrest , Nygren jobs a gooden.