Fractured Celtic have their say on transfers but proof is in their under-cooked pudding

It’s not common for a 1030-word club statement to land at 8.42pm on such an evening. But then Celtic have been hogging the headlines all summer with their oft-criticised transfer window activity. What’s a few more days after the deadline during an international break ...

If you missed Celtic’s release, here’s the nuts and bolts of it: throwing money around is not sustainable, the club must comply with UEFA regulations, supporters’ grievances are taken seriously, the media report too many inaccuracies, “many factors” are at play when it comes to signing a player and that cash reserves are there to “manage the inherent volatility within football”.

There was a lot to digest for Celtic fans and the wider football public. This communique came 24 hours after the club’s embattled hierarchy met with representatives of the Celtic Supporters’ Association, the Affiliation of Registered Celtic Supporters’ Clubs and the Association of Irish Celtic Supporters’ Club, who no doubt made them crystal clear of the disaffection spreading through the fanbase due to sub-standard recruitment. Discussions were claimed by Celtic to have been “constructive”.

Ah, that’s good, because building something positive has recently been quite difficult for Celtic. They are a pale shadow of the team they were a year ago. In that period they have sold Matt O’Riley, Kyogo Furuhashi, Nicolas Kuhn and Adam Idah for more than £50 million, yet many - including their manager Brendan Rodgers - have for the past two months called for quality replacements, each passing week the demands becoming more pleading and desperate.

Celtic signed 11 players in the transfer window just closed, on a mixture of frees, loan and purchases: goalkeeper Ross Doohan, defenders Kieran Tierney, Hayato Inamura, Jahmai Simpson-Pusey and Marcelo Sarrachi, midfielder Benjamin Nygren, wingers Michel-Ange Balikwisha and Sebastian Tounekti and forwards Kelechi Iheanacho, Shin Yamada and Callum Osmand. The spend is probably in the region of £15m - and not all of the aforementioned players are remotely ready to play first-team football at Celtic.

Celtic’s big deals came after Champions League qualifiers

Around £10m of that expenditure came after Celtic crashed out of the Champions League qualifiers to Kairat Almaty, as Balikwisha and Tounekti arrived too late to play in the two-legged match where Celtic carried the threat of a small child wielding a plastic spatula. In more than 210 minutes of football, they could not score against one of the most limited teams to ever qualify for Europe’s premier competition.

Failure to reach the Champions League tipped many fans over the edge. A lot of those supporters have taken aim at the board. And if Celtic’s chiefs felt that their statement might soothe some of sores among their fans, they appear mistaken. The response to their comments has hardly been warm and it has not dispelled the sentiment of a board unwilling to properly fund a successful football team.

Add in a few more poisonous ingredients from the past 48 hours - namely the revelation that star player Daizen Maeda was refused a deadline-day transfer because a suitable replacement could not be found and reports that Rodgers is “engineering his own exit” - and Celtic are glugging a pretty noxious potion. This statement was hardly the antidote.

Celtic made a handful of reasonable points in that they want to be financially healthy - what successful business doesn’t? - and that “supporters seek clarity”, hence the decision to make some public comments. Yet there was no contrition for a failed transfer window. “It is not always possible to achieve all of the objectives set within a transfer window, and that is regrettable,” was about as good as it gets on that front.

It appears the media are partly to blame for Celtic’s lack of signings - we have “commoditised” the transfer window. Some stories are completely inaccurate, they claimed. There’s plenty of juicy gossip and rumour going around every day of the year when it comes to football - it’s hard to see how that affects the professional business of concluding a transfer. Every other team manages it.

‘What Celtic was willing to pay was simply too big’

What we do know is that Celtic weren’t prepared to pay the going rate for Go Ahead Eagles’ winger Jakob Breum. Conjecture? No, the Dutch club’s sporting director confirmed as much during the week. “The gap between what we were asking for and what Celtic was willing to pay was simply too big,” said Marc van Hintum. “Jakob was open to it, but there was no agreement with Celtic.”

In a bit of slap in Celtic’s face, Go Ahead Eagles did do business with Rangers for Oliver Antman. "The amount we asked for was very realistic,” added Van Hintum, “and in line with the market, especially considering how things went with Oliver Antman.”

It is also not the fault of the media that Celtic couldn’t complete a deal for Anderlecht striker Kasper Dolberg a few days before the window closed. They would have been required to pay around £8 million for the striker before his formative club Ajax hijacked the deal, leaving Celtic scrabbling around for bargain-basement strikers. Kelechi Iheanacho may turn out to be a great signing on a free transfer, but the fans of the Scottish champions expected more.

We could go on. Celtic can blame aliens on Mars for what happened in the transfer market this summer; they need to look far, far closer to home.

Do they have an adequate scouting network? Are they proficient enough in the negotiating process? And even with these pesky UEFA restrictions that most other clubs deal with, are they prepared to pay the going rate? £8m for Dolberg suggests they had at least some sort of budget.

More crucially, are Celtic prepared to meet the expectations of their manager Rodgers and their increasingly disgruntled fanbase?

Depending on the next few months, the January transfer window may be one of those moments of “inherent volatility” that football throws up, particularly if Rangers - and possibly even Hearts and Hibs - take advantage of the fractured state Celtic currently finds itself in.