New manager

Net spend yes, but he also broke our transfer record twice in that period, had another in the top 5 technically in Jota.

I’m sure the reply would be he got £11m to spend to replace a player brought in for £1.5m, £9m to replace a £3m striker in Oh, £6m for the second most expense spent for a CB. So he’s also spent the most money any manager has.


And it’s rather irrelevant to me the semantics debates it causes, the issue in the whole is how we conducted any business to back him regardless of fees spent. He had 4 windows and we done it right in one of them last summer. 2 windows in the winter, we can put an argument of good business spin on them. Kuhn and Idah first one, Idah was major to win the league and scottish cup, Kuhn went on to earn a £17m fee for him and was tremendous for a time.

The following one, we sold a striker at 30 who was dropping from what he was steeply for £10m (and he has scored one goal for 2 teams since then) and brought in Jota, who started back like he never left and bis injury was a massive blow. And brooght in that physical Lb we all wanted didn’t we? And that’s what will get pointed at, In reality we left ourselves very short, dragged our heels and left us scrambling. No forward planning. Every window a surprise to them seemingly.


Then this summer happened. Which is only outdone by the Willo Flood January window

 

Ajax sacked Heitenga, just accepted they’ll Dolberg us

 

Nancy is an interesting one.

Until the rumours I'd never heard of him. Having checked out various things about him since then, he seems like a guy that might have the right character to do well. We're still going to have the same issues and repeated failings unless we sort things out behind the scenes tho, but as a manager profile, he's an interesting candidate

 

It's because Ange didn't spend a lot of money on transfers, either. With him, it was a series of cheap punts that were successful, in general. This came down to his superb scouting ability. He was stonewalled as soon as he wanted to advance to the next spending bracket.

 

And Gerrard is 3rd favourite.

People need to stop looking at bookies for insight

 

The WhatsApp doing the rounds


Wilfried Nancy is now very much in pole position to be the next permanent Celtic FC manager

Talks have been progressing well and a long shortlist has now been cut down to two main candidates of Nancy and Kjetil Knutsen - but Knutsen is now seen as more of a long shot -

Some scoffed at the suggestion when he first mentioned him but you don’t have to dig deep to see how he is a very attractive candidate to the Celtic board…



He was appointed to his first managerial job at the age of 40 with CF Montreal and took them to the Canadian championship a year later




He then moved across the border to MLS side Columbus Crew and has RIPPED it up with his all out attack 3-4-3 style



He won the MLS Cup on his first season before winning the Leagues Cup in his second and was also named Manager of the Year


But without doubt his greatest achievement to date was taking Columbus Crew all the way to the final of the CONCACAF Cup - the North American Champions League - which is usually dominated by teams from Mexico and Latin America and only been won by 3 US teams in history. In European terms that would be like taking a team like Aston Villa or Leeds United to a Champions League final

His style of play has been likened to Jurgen Klopp’s “rock n roll” football.

If Columbus Crew lose their playoff on Saturday then don’t be surprised if Nancy is in the door at Parkhead by this time next week

It has been rumoured that Shaun Maloney and Damien Duff will be part of his coaching staff

 

Under this board, he'd be constrained as *. His teams apparently do very few long passes. Now, we have 2 guys in our back 4 that are really good at long passes but not so much at shorter passes.

I do not see the current board sanctioning a massive revamp of the team that would mean Scales and Ralston are sold, and new backup CB and RB brought in. This means Nancy would be saddled with players that do not fit his ideas. And there will be injuries, meaning Scales and Ralston will get game time. In fact, currently, this is the situation Nancy would inherit.

Not to mention the fact that our poor performances this season happened under a rigid possession philosophy where players were told not to be direct. Nancy is a horrible option on multiple levels. If MON can squeeze a win tomorrow, and Knutsen refuses our approach, I'm praying to * MON stays.

 

There was a big difference in what was needed when Ange came in compared to what it was when Rodgers did.

Ange had 13 first team players, one of them a wee nonce, another of them was Ralston who wasn’t viewed as anything but surplus until Ange got a hold of him and made him one.

Ange needed a wide spread of players brought in, money spent carefully because we had a lot we needed. We didn’t to his satisfaction or crucially again - quick enough.

But we ended that window with Jura, GG, Kyogo, Abada and with Jota and CCV on loan. That outlay was about one Engels fee.

When BR took over from Ange, it was a treble winning very strong squad. And it only needed some real quality 2 players or so, more than that when Jota got sold but that should have got more money to work with.

And what did we do? Scattergun approach but this time without Ange guiding it. Instead of the two or three quality to kick us on to another level, we got guys like Yang, Kwon, Nawrocki, Lagerbielke, that wee Aussie winger I can’t even mind the name of…

Honestly I would be perfectly fine with the money spent. The problem is how quickly we do our business, it’s incredibly ridiculously slow and us having no * plan for the approach we should take in the market. We’re incompetent as *, and clubs have commented on us being so, with that reputation spreading then its going to be a harder job for * that are already very poor at doing it

 

Again, I feel people are underestimating just how badly Rodgers was shafted. It's not that the team needed money spent on it and didn't get it; it's that every single window, vastly more quality left than arrived. 7 figures more every window. Negative £50 million in 5 windows.

We could have started with the Lions the day Rodgers walked through the door and we'd still be in trouble now.

 

Will O’Neill be able to turn this injury ravaged, want away, self doubting and some, just poor footballers, into a relentless winning team, even I think it’s beyond him, the memories from Seville and many more he gave me want to believe, but it’s past now.
We cannot wait for another Howe, look at the scum, Rhol or whatever his name is, turned them down, then shamelessly took the job for reasons unknown- £££s, he is crap ffs.
We need a new manager-we need to back them, we need togetherness again.
First though the board must go, so against all I have said, keep O’Neil until the summer, then we reset boardroom.
Then appoint new management team.

 

Compounded in the summer to an extreme point that.

He had one summer that was the way it should be done, and that team was the best in the CL we’ve had for a long time.


But we will always sell for higher than we buy, O’Riley went for about £30m. We aren’t going to get another player £30m to replace that. And that particular instance, we had a big outlay and a plan for replacement ready when the deals had a domino effect.

It’s shockingly rare though.

He 100% was shafted by us. Jota left his first summer. How did we replace him? We relied on Maeda to do it all

Then his last summer now, Kuhn gets sold. And how do we replace Kuhn? Well that’d be Maeda again.


And guess what, the previous window when we sell Kyogo, how do we replace him? Ooft look at that, it’s Maeda again

 

Kühn was replaced by Nygren, a player that is unable to play the way Kühn did. But your overall point is absolutely correct. Rodgers was shafted. No sane manager would accept working under this board as a full-time job.

 

Nygren was clearly brought in to play centrally and has filled in at RW, despite him playing there regularly previously. BR and now MON have him centrally first, Martin having him further forward more attacking midfielder that I think is where he’ll be suited best

 

Guess Nancy's 1st job will he to deal with Iheanacho then if we are going off WhatsApp rumours now

 

Would prefer Knutsen, but Nancy seems like an exciting appointment too tbh

 

Shallow as * but…. The guys called Nancy

 

If it is Nancy it would make sense.

Relatively unknown and from a unfashionable league so the board will feel they will be able to use him as another puppet manager that they can * around with recruitment.

In terms of his style, off all the managers linked he's the one who our current squad would be least suited to so given our boards history of using joined up and smart thinking he'd likely be the one they clueless * would go with.

Also there is a genuine chance to get a really highly rated manager in Knutsen so of course our out of touch board would go for some unknown quantity instead of the coup.

 

The positive part of me thinks Nancy has done well in the MLS which is a league that is pretty much a level playing field for most clubs similar to Ange in the A and J league. The negative side of me thinks who the * is this guy and how much weight do we put in MLS success

 

I would prefer keeping MO'N and Maloney till the end of the season than appointing Knutsen or Nancy, both are very underwhelming and if appointed will end up being hampered by a backward thinking Board like no other.