Celtic's 2025/26 Summer transfer window: Stage: Panic

There's no excuses. Every other club in world football manages to go out and sign players yet we have folk defending our board when they do the bare minimum to keep us slightly ahead.

The minimum should be spending the money we have brought in. We don't even seem willing to do that. Instead we just continue to hoard cash with the rainy day excuse being trotted out. How much do we need sitting in the bank in the event of CL qualification failure ?

Imagine we * that up and the huns made it into the group stages. The swing in their favour would be massive, and they would go out and strengthen with the extra money.

* know what's going on but it's getting closer and closer to panic stations.

 

With our current model i think we break around even if we get to europa league. So not qualifying for champions league is not a blocker to spending.

I think they are using pre season to assess certain players and are being slow to make a call on where they want to spend.

I dont really get why there hasnt been at least 1 wide player signed by now though. We have known that we definately need replacements there for some time.

 

A CB a DM..2 wingers and a striker is a must.
Midfield was non existent 2nd half,seen this many times in Europe.. maybe last year was a blip and we're back to chasing shadows?.

If this is what we have for the upcoming season it won't be won by 17pts this time.
Maybe 15!

 

Minimum of 4 first team players needed pronto. Overall gonna cost £20mil+ but we will need to lose a couple and with the funds already brought in we probably will have a negative net spend so I dont see why we * around so much.

The * on the board need ousted regardless.

The 90's was awful but at least we actually were skint back then. We act like we are skint now but far from it.

 

Perhaps we aren't that high, but we are higher than Norwich, a championship side with no European football.
But we let a player we "monitored" for two years sign for them instead, pretending all the time that the value kept increasing, when it turned out he had a release clause regardless.

We are also higher up the food chain than Nice, who need to play an additional qualifier for the UCL than us, yet a supposed target replacement for the outgoing Kuhn, decided that was his destination and didn't let the fact that their European fate hadn't been decided yet, factor in to his choice.

Perhaps neither of these two players would have signed for us, but the supposed excuses we allow to slide are highlighted far too often to be full of *.

Or take Feyenoord, who I think it's 2 attacking mids, a left winger, right winger and a CB have all been signed already for a combined £30-40m, business done early for key positions we are even screaming out for, decent money spent. Also a team with an additional qualifier, yet they managed to get their business done early and long before their competitive games.

Only Celtic continue to make transfer dealings seem harder and more complicated than they actually are.

"Hi, we like the look of your player, how much is he worth to you?"
"£5m and you can talk to him"

"Hold on"

6 weeks later

"How about £1.5m?"



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The man in charge over the last 2+ decades is also the man who was financial controller back in 93/94.

Not saying PL was complicit in the * of the 90s, but I reckon he has genuine fears and panicka of things being that way again, to the point he is a right * and slow at making these decisions that he is hampering us anyway


That or the * really does hate the fanbase and is doing everything he can to * us off.

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Feels like the panic button has officially been pressed.

 

Just get the feeling that the board dont trust BR after his big money signings last season have failed to deliver-Idah Engles and Trusty

 

Celtic have their very own little micro climate when it comes to transfers.

Deals take months to be done*


* unless we are selling then those are easy done. Weird that eh?

 

The baw is officially burst between Brendan and the board.
How can the manager (sorry, coach) possibly not know or question what the ambition is? Unless...

Post match presser....(Scotsman)

Celtic sign off on the banks of Lake Como on Saturday against Al Ahli and asked about a pressing need for new signings, Rodgers told journalists in Italy: “It depends what your ambition is. If your ambition is to really progress and push forward, then we need to improve the squad"

 

If we start the season with Scales, Yang, Idah and Engels as first picks we should be allowed to sue the club

 

Think our biggest issue is wage structure. Our policy seems to be offering a relatively low wage with the promise of an increase once they've proved they can perform and are reliable. Guys like Hatate, Maeda, Kyogo, O'Riley have all been bumped up at some stage due to producing the goods.

Think that's a sensible approach, but it's part of the reason it's a slog trying to bring in established quality. For this to change it would need to be a change in policy agreed at board level and implemented thoroughly before acting on it.

Allocating a higher wage budget would see things improve pretty quickly, and I think they should be looking into it. But again it would need to be well thought out to avoid throwing money about * nilly at the risk of things getting out of control.

Structured, profit-driven policies are a good thing, imo it just needs revisited and brought up a level.

 

Pish. Frimpong, Kerkez, Wirtz, Ekitike. These are the cream of the crop when it comes to young talent in their positions. They will have have plenty of other clubs sniffing around, Wirtz could walk into any team.

We are dealing with the likes of a winger from Royal Antwerp for a few bob who’s just off the physio table and we can’t even get that done.

 

It’s all relative and there’s a bit more than just those two clubs for the top young talent to go to. That makes it even more impressive they got it done so fast, especially Wirtz.

These deals are not easy and they’ve got them tied up before August. We aren’t talking about marquee signings… we are talking about players from Go Ahead Eagles ffs. We aren’t even losing players to teams competing in the CL, we are losing players to Norwich and Nice.

We aren’t in Liverpool’s food chain. We should be top of the food chain we are in, the teams we realistically compete with for transfers.

*Ok Nice might get there. Point stands though.

 

The lack of rumours is worrying, again the idea of wait & see. Though knew fine well after the earl signings came in there would be a gap but once Kuhn was sold we should of had a replacement in straight away.

The reactive recruitment always bites us on the *, especially since we play the huns the day after the window closes when we’ll likely see the panic buys.

 

You’ve completely missed the point. Forget the level of talent Liverpool have signed and look at how efficiently they’ve done it.

I could probably give you a club closer to our size that have done it too. If you pay the money you get the player.

I’m not talking about the deals we have done, I’m talking about the ones we haven’t done.

 

Why are people still convincing themselves that players don't want to come here until the last week of August? It's gaslighting yourself and doing exactly what the board wants you to do.

Do people think Nygren had no other options? Great in the Danish league and broke into the Sweden national team. We managed to get him to say yes fairly quickly. Said it before, pay the going rate to the club and offer the player a fair wage. It's really that simple.

The odd one will reject us or take his time...but not all of them. We can, usually, offer CL football and trophies, and we're a springboard for moves to bigger leagues. If we pay a fair wage then we're a very attractive club.

 

Go look at Feyenoord. A team in our market we compete with.

They’ve spent almost €50m on 7 players already.

I’m not even saying we have to spend that much, but no excuse can be made for our lack of efficiency.

 

Feyenoord are a good example they knew their centre back Hancko was likely away so done a deal for his replacement had him in the door sold Hancko. €9m out for Wantabe and €30m in for Hancko

They have done the same with Steijen and Valente €17m to get them in and sold Milambo for €20m to Brentford.

They apparently wanted Oh, Genk didn’t want to sell moved on and got Tengstedt.

Are likely to lose Paxiao so have bought Borges for €10m before selling him.

Hartman they knew he would probably be away (would have last year if not for injury) so signed Smals last year and even loaned Bueno to cover Hartmans injury so they had competition.

Even taking away the quality of players it is actual planning and execution of deals.

They know there’s a chance they lose Timber so signed Moder last January. Lost Wiefer last summer signed Hwang In Beom.

Each time they have made a sizeable profit on all those deals but they have invested in their squad for now and the future.

They bought Ueda whilst still having Gimenez knowing he would move on for big money eventually. He was then settled the time they sold the later.

They also spotted a diamond in the rough in Hadj Moussa, paid £3m for him and will likely sell him for a big profit. Brought through a couple of academy talents in Reid and Milambo who they have already sold for €20m.

There is levels to doing this player trading and clubs like Feyenoord and Club Brugge are miles ahead of us at it.