This was a picture of Celtic Park during the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth games. It looks a bit like Armageddon at Parkhead, which seems appropriate if you listen to a few Celtic fans and some in the media today.

Celtic were horsed out the Champions League. I am not a big one for slang, but ‘horsed’ seems to fit nicely on this occasion. Over two legs the Glasgow giants were humbled and lost 6-1 on aggregate to Legia Warsaw.

The inquest in how Celtic suffered so badly against the Polish champions has already begun in media circles, on twitter and within Glasgow pubs. No doubt it will also be happening at the Celtic training ground (Lennoxtown) and in the boardroom at Parkhead.

The Poles themselves will be a bit surprised by the results. According to Polish football expert Ryan Hubbard…

“Legia would have thought they had it in them to progress but the manner of the victory would never have been predicted”

Now I have already seen a few reasons for the heavy defeat.

Too many pre-season games, they need to get used to the new boss, not enough spending, they missed key players and it was too early in the season.

The truth is a bit of all of those reasons will come into play, plus more.

The new manager himself had a pop at the preseason schedule, citing they had done too much travelling around Europe and played too many fixtures in that time-frame. Well to be honest it’s up to the manager to rotate the numbers in these games and not over expose his players to a high volume of minutes. Celtic have a huge youth squad that can help with numbers.

They certainly did miss captain Scott Brown but come on, Celtic are not a one man team and Brown surely doesn’t offer that much that he can’t be replaced in the odd game. If that is the case then Celtic need to take along hard look at their coaching set-ups and the scouting department.

Ah the old ‘too early in the season’ comment. That was a go to excuse for both sides of the Old Firm for years. The fact is, no one mentions it when Celtic go through, like they did in the previous two seasons.

Obviously it always takes time for a new coach to come in and get his philosophies across. But we usually see a honeymoon period, that hasn’t been the case in these fixtures. I still think Ronny Deila needs time to get to grips with the job and all it entails.

The spending issue is probably the big one to be honest. Celtic’s chief executive Peter Lawwell always seems to hang fire on signings until the club securely reaches the group stages of the Champions League. To be fair to him that has happened in the last two seasons. Although last term the tie against Shakhter Karagandy should have been a warning to Lawwell and his board that they were playing a risky game.

In the past week or two, former boss Neil Lennon has intimated that the lack of speedy and decent transfer business was a reason for his departure. Essentially it almost ties a managers hands behind their back every summer. Lennon isn’t a stupid man, he learned off Martin O’Neill that you need to protect your CV as a manager and that he’d probably taken Celtic as far as he could with the budget available to him.

Plus lets not forget that the squad gets depleted of top performers each summer too. With players like Ki Sung-Yueng, Victor Wanyama and Gary Hooper all departing in recent seasons. Giorgios Samaras left this summer and now without any Champions League money or exposure, we might see Virgil van Dijk, Fraser Forster and Kris Commons also leave the Parkhead club.

Celtic need to do more to replace these players and probably do it before the crunch qualifiers as its sometimes better to speculate to accumulate. Now I am not saying spend between £5m and £10m on one player. But surely Celtic can afford to splash out £2m 0r £3m on a decent player and do that on a few more faces too.

I admire Celtic and how they handle most of their business but the continuous ‘wait and see’ policy stinks and lacks ambition.

Getting back to the title of this article, should we write off their season this term?

Now in terms of league title, its a forgone conclusion that the ‘Hoops’ are too strong for anyone else in Scotland. They will win the title at a canter. It would be nice if Dundee United, Aberdeen or anyone else could give Celtic a few bloody noses and keep within touching distance for as long as possible.

But its far from over in terms of the new Ronny Deila era. If he sells, and he’ll probably have to, then he shouldn’t stop at the top guys. He should also cut adrift some of the deadwood like Efe Ambrose, Anthony Stokes and Beram Kayal. Then bring in more exciting players from the youth squads and buy cheap options from home and abroad that are young and have potential. Plus splash a wee bit of cash (that the club have generated in sales) and buy very decent players with a bit of experience but can be sold on at a later date too.

The new regime has a chance in my opinion to get Celtic back to playing exciting, adventurous and attacking football. Get them ready for next year and the next time the Champions League qualifiers come around.

They also still have the Europa League. That could be an ideal competition for both the new manager and his new-ish squad to gain experience and confidence from, if they prepare for it in the right manner.

Also Neil Lennon didn’t achieve it all whilst he was manager at Parkhead. The Celtic great didn’t manage to secure a treble and that could be an achievable goal for Ronny Deila and show the fans he’s a winner with fire in his belly.

So for me, no Celtic’s seasons shouldn’t be so quickly written off. Yes they have failed in their primary objective but a lot can be done that can improve the whole club as long as the board and management team work as one and finally show more ambition when it matters most.

 

Posted on August 7th, 2014 by scott
Filed under: Article