Misallocation of resources

@Mr Shelby brought up this topic last night.

We are extremely wasteful with our resources.

We somehow manage to be paradoxically miserly and prodigal in the transfer market. We fight tooth and nail to knock pennies off of our top targets, and then when we invariably and inevitably miss out on them, we lurch to another target of significantly inferior quality, who often bears no similarity to the original target in terms of pedigree or profile, and readily part with millions of pounds for a player who the manager has no intention of ever playing.

We wipe out any profits we make on players like Virgil, Dembélé and Tierney by spending fees on players like Bayo, Bolingoli, and Klimala.

Our scouts identify (often clearly) substandard players, our board pursues the 'cheap' options, and our manager obstinately refuses to play anyone outside a select group of trusted players (which, incidentally, makes our academy redundant).

Our wage bill is exorbitant. It often exceeds the wage bills of clubs in the knockout rounds of the Champions League, and the latter stages of the Europa League, never mind the Champions League qualifying rounds.

Our squad is bloated with overpaid first-team players with oversized egos, and substandard fringe players, who we knew were substandard before we signed them.

We could and should be head and shoulders above clubs like AEK, CFR Cluj, and Ferencváros with our resources. There is no arrogance in that statement. What is arrogant is thinking that we are head and shoulders above them simply because we outspend them (by a significant margin).

We need a clear out, and we need to be far more prudent with our resources.

Get rid of this culture of 'jobs for the boys'. It is destroying the club. Employ coaches and scouts on the basis of merit alone.

If we insist on going for 'cheap' options, go for the cheapest! The six players who have scored against us to knock us out of the Champions League in the last two seasons (Rondón, Deac, Omrani, Tucudean, Sigér, and Nguen) cost their respective clubs a combined total of £765,000. The three AEK scorers in 2018-19 (Klonaridis, Brito, and Livaja) cost a combined total of £1.8m.

We spent £3.6m on Klimala, and Lennon thinks so little of him that he selected a midfielder ahead of him.

Better yet, invest in our academy, our coaching staff, and our scouting department; devise a clear and sensible transfer strategy; and use our financial muscle to pull out of sight of our rivals in domestic competition and the Champions League qualifying rounds.

 

Fantastic post pal

 

Good post

 

The jobs for the boys idea has to go Darren O'Dea is in charge of our under 18s and after listening to him last night it hardly fills me with confidence in him

 

Good points, when cluj papped us out there wage bill was under 7 mill(i believe reading that at the time, could be wrong), which was effectively 10% of ours, they were fit, well organised and decent of the ball when they wanted to be and had some decent players.. amazing what can be achieved when being very astute. Our game in this country at club and international level has declined quite dramatically in the last 2 decades, but due to the size of our club and income.. well, agents and potential players are very aware what they can demand here. We're falling behind similarly sized nations and more are catching up.

 

Spot on.

The post about our permanent signings since 2015/16 makes for grim reading. 8 successful signings in 5 seasons.

Countless of millions * up against the wall on Bayo, Klimala, Eboue, Soro, Bolingoli, Hendry, Morgan, Shved etc.

And that’s not even considering some of our duff loan signings.

 

Agree. I'd like to touch on Klimala here. It is absolutely true he played for a very mediocre Polish side but to add to that, he wasn't exactly their top man or anything like that. Milik went from Górnik to Leverkusen for less and that was when Górnik was top 3 and he was their main striker. Additionally, I often see here that people say that Klimala was Lennon's signing. That's not true. He clearly said to Polish media that he never saw Klimala play.

 

We penny pinch on certain targets then blow all sorts on projects that will never progress, the whole club seems a mess at present and there’s a lack of real leadership.

 

I think we need to be open about how the club actually operates.

Bayo and Shved were clearly not management or scout signings given that Congerton had been frozen out and the rat's comments on the signings at the time.

• Who signed them?
• Why were they signed if not identified by the management team?
• Have lessons been learned and a change in the process since then? if not, why not?

Were Klimala and Soro signed by Lennon or have we returned back to the system of signing players based on majority consensus, like we did under Park, Lawwell and Lennon in his 1st term?

• If they were signed by Lennon then why are they not being given a chance?
• If they weren't signed by Lennon, why does the manager not have the ultimate say in signing players that he will then have to pick?

Why are we slow to bed in replacements when we have plenty prior notice of big players being sold?

Ajer's agent is on record saying last season would be his last at Celtic, yet here we are almost in September with him as 1 of our 2 senior CBs in the squad.

 

Atleast 30 million spent there on absolute duds that couldn’t have played more than 50 games combined for the club. Our scouting and recruitment is * compared to clubs our size on the continent

 

A very good post. Imagine if all that money spunked on dross was used instead to set up schools/academies in other parts of the world. We all sat here before Lennon was appointed talking about Directors of football and changing the infrastructure, but here we are, and we'll be here again next year saying the same things.

All it takes is pumping the huns and cantering the league and everybody will sink back into the delusion that we're a good side.

 

Add up the money we've spent on Soro, Mulumbu, Benyu, Kouassi etc and we could've just signed one CM for £10m on decent wages, then let him rot in the reserves while we give Brown 90 mins every game until he's 40.

 

Great post.

The issue with it though, and indeed an issue the club has had for as long as I can remember, is that there’s no clear accountability. Klimala is a perfect example of that, and Schved was too. Lennon hadn’t watched the former play and Rodgers hadn’t watched the latter, so then who takes responsibility for their signings? The only others I can thing of would be Lawwell and Congerton/the guy that replaced him. So when it comes to criticising different aspect of the club, it’s very difficult to pinpoint who’s responsible. I actually wonder if this is deliberate.

The way we operate feels, and has felt for a long time, very scattergun. Our scouting feels disconnected from the reality of the standard of player we need to progress, or replace those leaving. Our coaching feels like an old boys network, again with a lack of accountability. That aspect along is so dangerous, far bigger organisations than Celtic have failed because of simple nepotism. Our overall strategy never really feels long term or well pieced together.

We might make it to the 10 this year and that would be a brilliant achievement obviously, but I really hope the club are looking at how they can change things. What do they want Celtic to look like? You want to focus on player development? Fine, invest heavily in the youth setup, bring in the best coaches we possibly can, and have a very clear pathway from the unders teams to the first team. You want to focus on signing hidden gems? Fine, make sure we have the absolute best scouting network we possibly can. Revolutionise the way we look at players, and when one comes along that fits the bill, realise that there’s a fine line between driving a hard bargain and missing out on potentially excellent talent.

Right now it doesn’t feel like we really adopt either of those philosophies. We try and piece together a team by signings lots of players, some of whom turn out to be good, most of whom never make it hear, and some of whom are never even given a chance to do so.

I think someone mentioned that there was a 1m pound difference between how much we paid for Klimala and how much we paid for Ajetti, and that just some up how well informed you need to be in the transfer market. The difference in price between a project from a team in the lower half of the Polish league and a Swiss international who’s looked the part for a very good Basel side, should be much more than it was.

 

We actually resemble Barcelona at the moment albeit operating at a different level. Scattergun approach to signing players, no idea who gives the approval for signings and this Celtic man mates mentality for getting coaching positions.

All outdated ideas in football and it’s being found out at some very big clubs all across Europe.

Get in place a coherent playing style and philosophy and bring in coaches who can implement that style along with the right type of players.

 

I count 16, at least.

Boyata, Christie, Simunovic, Sviatchenko, Ajer, Dembele, Toure, Sinclair, Hayes, Ntcham, Bain, Edouard, Jullien, Elhamed, Taylor, Frimpong.

All of those have made a positive impact to different degrees.

 

Best post ive read in here in a while tbh.