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

Moonhowlers - what a great term, gonna borrow this one....
Why dont we all slip outside into the sun, maybe have a cold beer, and then log back in a week or two later

 

I think Idah was bought to replace Kyogo originally (we spent 9MM on him which I doubt we do unless planning on a 1st choice player). He didnt entirely convince so when we moved Kyogo on as planned I think we genuinely were looking at bringing in another striker in Jan (we were in talk with Kvistgaarded, linked with Strelec etc). With the healthy lead we had in the league and the prices being quoted for the strikers we were interest in aroun jan being deemed excessive - I think the decision was made to hold off and wait until Summer where we could negotiate a better deal.

We wound up moving Maeda there as a temporary measure but he ended up excelling and outperformed both Kyogo and Idah so I think plans were changed to consider Maeda as a legit striker and then shift to looking at wide options.

We have brought in 2 other striker this Summer - one a development and now this Japanese guy.

 

Of the players at the club, he should be.
But we can all see he's gonna be out left while Jota is still out.

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So far it's looking like another summer TW where the signings we make appear to be based on the possibility of making a profit rather than these players actually being what we need to improve the team. Nothing wrong with looking to make money of course, it's essential for clubs without a sugar daddy or massive TV income, but why can't we sign players to improve the team and make a profit on them instead of endless punts and projects like Holm, Kwon, Kobayashi etc. KT will certainly improve the team. Nygren, possibly, if what people who know him have told us is correct. I personally can't shake the feeling that BR and the recruitment team don't actually know what the team requires to really improve. Or at the very least they are in disagreement about it. It's not about spending big either. Clubs from the smaller leagues across Europe regularly sign very good players for less than £6M or so. Players who would be more than willing to come here should we want them. A bit more flexibility, a bit more imagination and a bit more focus. That's what I'd like to see with regard to incoming players.

 

Was playing him there essentially every game after Kyogo left not a good enough indicator, nah?

 

On what basis? We are clearly targeting wingers as it's all we've been properly linked with and I'd argue we seem to be prioritising wingers who play on the left, like Balikwisha, Jansson, Orjasaeter etc.

I just think the evidence points differently to what you're suggesting.

 

I think people see them making g what 7 signing and think we need to get in gear when infact we have a settled squad they are in rebuild and making scatter gin signings I think


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I think you're right, unfortunately. The club never seen fit to break out of their current model and invest consistently in higher quality players. Presumably they feel they spent unwisely with Idah and/or Engels and have resorted to type. The same thing happened a few years ago when they bought Ajeti and Barkas - they got their fingers burnt and it was a while before we were spending that kind of money on a single player again.

The problem with our strategy is that it suits a club with a far smaller budget than ours. You can only spread investment across so many assets in football because a squad is limited. We have tens of millions in the bank that will accrue far more value when invested into players than in it ever will in interest. We should be investing it into a higher caliber of young player that we naturally seek to sell for profit also. But I can only conclude that our board are too risk averse to commit to such a strategy. That lack either the appetite or the bottle for it - possibly both.

 

Maybe spend some money now that we’ve sold Kuhn.

Really we should have his replacement signed by this time next week.

 

Right, that's £17m from Kuhn come in, a big sell on % from Frimpong's move (approx. £5m) and other bits and bobs in the bank.

We need some quality and significant investment into the team ahead of the Champions League play off now.

If the board holds back to see if we qualify or not, it won't be accepted by either the fans or the manager.

 

It all comes back to being proactive. Instead of waiting to see if we qualify before spending some money I would say spend first and get the players in so that we have a better chance of qualifying and getting the big CL bucks. If we aren't in a position to do that now when will we be?

 

There's a massive difference playing him there last season out of necessity due to not signing a striker, to actually moving forward this season with him as his 1st choice.

We will see over next month or so but wouldn't be surprised if he's back on the wing for the start of the season or whenever we bother our * to sign a striker.

 

The striker market we are shopping in suggests to me unless yamada surprises everyone maeda will start the season at cf..

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I think an exciting winger signing or even strong link changes a lot of perspectives. At the end of last season we basically had 4 attacking players in Maeda, Idah, Jota and Kuhn. Yes Forrest came back in and out and Yang too but the starting 3 was out the four above. We then lost Jota so we had a starting 3 and Kenny kind of got a few cameos and one start.

We are now in a situation where if we still play a front 3 we have Maeda, Idah and Yamada coming in with Forrest, Osmand and Kenny backing that up by all accounts it sounds like Yang is going to be off at least on loan.

We need a couple of signings in there to raise the quality of options we have in those wide areas.

I do think Nygren brings goals to the midfield and Tierney provides more attacking threat than Taylor but it is really those wing positions and then centre back that need urgent attention as things stand.

 

Hopefully he does as it's his best position.

Need to get a move on then with wingers as we need at least 2, probably 3 if Maeda is going to be main striker

 

It unfortunately extends beyond these forums. Listen to how impatient the stadium gets if we’re not winning by HT.

As an fanbase we’re totally spoiled to the point that nothing is good enough any more. It’s like people need to manufacture controversy of some sort the second there’s a slip up of any kind.

 

Rodgers intimated in his first summer window that he thought Maeda would be extremely useful through the middle.

You said above that we knew Kyogo was leaving from the October before, which I don't think anyone disputes. Now, do you think it's possible that Rodgers was happy to run with Maeda and Idah through the middle until the summer, with Kenny coming back in a supporting role? I think that's pretty much a given, no? I think the general consensus in here was that he was happy to wait for the right player in the summer, which we all assumed would be Kvistgaarden.

Do you also think it's possible that, seeing how effective Maeda was through the middle, that he changed his mind on his summer priorities and decided against spending a large sum of money on a striker, moving forward with both Maeda and Idah and deciding to upgrade the 3rd striker? So, replacing Kenny, who is likely to be sold/loaned out with Yamada?

By the way, we may start him on the left and go with Idah or Yamada through the middle to start with. I don't think that's completely unrealistic but I think that we will be working on deals for wingers behind the scenes and we will be speaking to wingers who will have multiple options and are giving them the time required before moving on to our 2nd/3rd/4th targets.

 

Realistically to improve first 11 immediately, think we urgently need a centre half to go in beside ccv and a left winger, that's playing nygren rw and a mid of Engels McGregor and hatate..

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He was on record in January saying he wanted a striker and was disappointed not to get one. So no I don't think that was the plan. It became the plan due to failure of recruitment team to find a striker in 3 months.

As it turned out, it worked out fantastically well as Maeda turned out to be a tremendous centre forward.

However we have already all but signed 2 new strikers one looks very much a 3rd choice option and one is a bit of a mystery tbh.

Either way we are very short of attacking players at the moment and ideally you'd want a couple in before start of the season.

If not we run same risk as last season were one of our main guys picks up an injury and we then get bent over and made to pay over the odds as clubs then know we are desperate.

 

He was but he also mentioned at the end of the window when the club didn't sign a striker that he didn't want to sign a striker for the sake of it. He wanted someone that he or the recruitment team had targeted. We could have signed a striker in January. Whether we could sign the striker that the manager wanted is another question and I think he wanted to wait. Now, we can dispute that. No one really knows. I don't think he was happy to wait but I think his preference was to go with what we had and target the players he wanted in the summer over getting someone in he didn't particularly want, see the Balotelli situation he encountered at Liverpool.

Again, we did bid for Strelec, which was believed to be around £6m. They wanted £9m and we walked away. So, yeah. It's not like we weren't targeting strikers in January, it's just none of the players the manager wanted were available for the sort of fee that represented fair value. I was happy not to pay £9m for Strelec, for example. Even though I quite like him and would have been happy to sign him, £9m is steep. Which is kinda why I wasn't all that bothered about the Jansson deal this summer. No chance should we be paying £10m for him. That's just not a fair value, in my opinion. Now, Rapid done their bit. They got the money they wanted but I'd be surprised if Nice get that sort of value out of him, to be honest.

We are short of wingers. I think we are covered up front, as I believe Maeda, Idah and Yamada are a good 3 to have as striking options and I do think Maeda having the flexibility to play both LW and ST means that we can move him around to cover injuries. We all seem to be writing off Adam Idah, as well. A proper pre-season under Rodgers and we may see a completely different player than we did last season. He still scored 20 goals as well, as a back up striker. So, again. Rodgers may feel like he can go 3/4 weeks into the season being a bit light up front so that he can get HIS targets in. You can't really blame him for that. Then no one can say that players are being thrust on him or that they never signed the players he wants. He lives and dies by his signings and his targets and that's the way it should be.