A record fee for Matt. If the Celtic Board have any ambitions as a football club then they need to quickly reinvest it by backing Brendan Rodgers. They have less than a week to do just that…
Matt O’Riley will unfortunately soon be a Brighton player and that leaves us a big void to fill no matter how huge the financial compensation is.
The EPL side have agreed to pay the Scottish champions a record transfer fee which will be worth upwards of £30 million to the club for the Danish international, who Celtic signed for just £1.5m from MK Dons, who I believe have a sell-on clause. And as Brighton are like Celtic a development club, Celtic’s sell-on clause could make another multi-million pound return on investment a few years down the line.
However all that means nowt if we don’t act fast and reinvest all that money received for Matt, or at least a sizeable chunk of it, on a replacement. Or at least bring in two or three quality players to cushion the blow.
Our board of directors aren’t renowned for reinvesting previous big incoming fees on quality players, and it’s highly doubtful that they will break the habit of a lifetime. They got lucky somehow arriving at the decision to appoint Ange Postecoglou after blowing the ten through a ludicrous summer spending ahead of the attempt at the ten.
Even in that season, when the supporters were not allowed into the grounds due to the pandemic, Celtic supporters sold out our season tickets. Brighton fans didn’t do that, nor did Atalanta supporters. Then they stumbled their way to appointing a new manager after the Neil Lennon appointment in shower ran out of steam.
It’s wasn’t Eddie Howe who they courted for many months but now desperate, they took a massive gamble on appointing an Australian coach working in Japan who had just been knocked back by AEK Athens despite being of Greek heritage.
Ange Postecolgou arrived and funds were quickly made available – funds that were provided not by our billionaire largest shareholder but by the Celtic support in exchange for a dodgy stream service on Celtic TV. He brought in players like Jota, Matt O’Riley, Liel Abada, Gorgios Giakoumakis, Carl Starfelt, Josef Juranovic and others who all delivered on the park before being sold for serious money. With Reo Hatate next, or perhaps Kyogo the return on allowing an elite manager to spend will be approaching £100m.
It’s imperative we at least bring in three or four new faces before the window slams shut next week. It’s what is needed if we want to push on from our success last season, not just domestically, but in Europe also. It’s also what is needed to keep the elite manager we have at the moment.
Ange Postecoglou was chasing success. He wanted that at Celtic and one of his reasons was that he always wanted to manage in the Premier League. Fair play to him.
Brendan Rodgers wants to manage Celtic. He is a better development coach than Ange Postecoglou and as a genuine Celtic supporter he wants to be the Celtic manager. Yesterday he sent a coded message to the Board and to the Celtic support. This time I know how to handle it better.
As a Celtic supporter he is as frustrated as you and I. But last time he took the quick fix that was far from the easy way out and did the moonlight shuffle down to Leicester. This time Brendan will stand his ground and wants to get his way in taking Celtic forward as a team that can compete in the Champions League.
Last summer with Ange’s head turned for many months and with Brendan coming back to ‘buy in’ to the board’s brilliant strategy of turning project signings into superstars after a few months at Lennoxtown, he was given new players from all around the world. He gave them all a chance and no we have one on Australia refusing to come back basically because the boy himself knows that he’s out of his depth.
Brendan is clearing up that mess and now with players like Abada, O’Riley and maybe more leaving he wants ‘quality’ rather than punts which were selected from the boardroom or their subordinates and NOT by an elite football coach.
The club is rolling in money yet are this morning, with less than a week to go until the window closes, weaker than we were at the end of last season. They have sold out on season tickets and have a huge waiting list, supporters being denied access to their team because of the lack of ambition in re-developing the main stand at Celtic Park. Fergus who was nowhere near as wealthy as Dermot Desmond built the three stands our current status in Scottish football is built on in one year. Desmond has been around for two decades and has failed to put hot water in the toilets, never mind put 20,000 new seats into Paradise.
It’s no use staying static just because theRangers are skint and below par at the moment. Those in charge must show serious ambition to push our football club to a new level. We have the means, it’s time to utilise those means so we can all reap the rewards, by backing Brendan. He might not have signed Matt O’Riley, who was a second choice remember after that Aussie guy opted for Middlesbrough (how did that work out for you bro?), but he DEVELOPED him into a player that Celtic were able to sell for £30m.
It’s make your mind up time Michael. You failed in January and promised us you’d put that right in the summer. You have until Friday evening then we can all take stock on where we are.
The very best of luck to Matt O’Riley, once a Celt…
Just an Ordinary Bhoy
I’ve never in my life read so much drivel on such an ongoing basis as I do about the Celtic board!
We’ve just heard about us OFFICIALLY being the best run club in Britain. Yet every single day when someone moves on, or we sign a new player, we go apeshit!
Who do we blame? We blame the board! Why not eh? After all, we all know better!
We are the most successful club this country has ever seen! We are the most successful club this country is ever LIKELY TO SEE!
We are fully responsible for driving the old rangers into extinction in 2011 as they died chasing lions!
We went from strength to strength.
The tribute act are not far off a repeat!
Us? We just keep on winning!
We buy players like Matty O’Riley for £1.5M in 2022 and 2.5 years later sell him on for £30M.
We buy Jota for £6M and one year later sell him for £25M. Buy Abada for £3.5M and 2 years later our moronic anti-Israeli fans drive him out, but our terrible board still get £9M for him.
Yes you idiots! This is how bad our board is! While we own Scottish football, wipe the domestic floor clean of trophies, despite the best efforts of the SFA and SPFL to stop it, we also manage, while spending £11M on three players over the space of just under three years, we bring in £64M for those three players! We have replaced two for under £6M combined and will speless than £10 to replace the third.
History also shows we will continue to dominate and OWN Scottish football, and you lot will continue complain about EVERYTHING for no reason!
Hail Hail
That’s where we are we are in a league that sells there tv rights for pittance and have our supporters going to games at unsuitable times for are working man then we have teams that welcomed Glasgow two big away support now they would rather have there stadiums half full which on tv looks terrible but it’s there club the joy of following your team to away games there was a few stadiums since all seating came in were brilliant tynecastle was great now they think they are big club that can’t full there own ground even when big two Glasgow clubs visit they give us less tickets each season cause they won’t admit they need thae away support to fill there stadiums now when sky who are happy to see our grounds with so many empty seats they only want spl to stop anybody else we have so many new cable companies coming up and spl attached themselves to sky for another 5years I hope in tears to come we Glasgow two break away from spl they are that far in front fincaily they have to trying to bring a top player to our club is hard cause the league were in even with the Glasgow two Celtic are finacily leaving Rangers behind who can only match by support even now Celtic park has 10, 000 more cappicty and fill it every league game
They will use the money they got for clearing out the dead wood plus a fraction of the Matt transfer . I for one won’t be spending a penny watching Celtic in the Champions League , sorry bur they are taking the urine.
Bigger profit equals fatter bonus.
They (together) will simply point out that the “model” works.
“Look at all these players bought for peanuts and sold on for a fortune. Same again please Brendan. We gave you the guy you wanted, and publicly. Now toe the line”.
Surely the board aren’t that out of touch with the feelings of the celtic fans, and more importantly what Brendan wants since last summer, if they are ,I can see . Sack the board, back the team days back again
Don’t know where you are going with this elite manager, as Rodgers is only elite at Scottish level, and yet to prove himself on the European stage yet with ourselves?
Already trying to promote an agenda that suits so many within our support, and all without knowing what is actually going on at present?
Rodgers remains responsible for the forming of our 25man squad simple as that?
No player has been allowed to leave, or placed upon Rodgers without his knowledge either imo?
He is responsible for the decision making involved in how he intends to finalise our 25man squad, which admittedly isn’t as easy as some would like to make out, but certainly not as hard as Rodgers seems to be having trouble with in regards of the answers that were expected to be found?
Are we really meant to believe that during the whole of the summer, that all of the players offered to Rodgers, to be making decisions upon, weren’t up to the quality standards he is supposed to be looking for?
Rodgers is no stranger to using the media for his own advantage either, yet is also a master of deflection also?
Yet what you have failed to mention is, that when Nicholson was working alongside Ange, where were the time delays in bringing in players?
If you want to promote a false agenda, then try asking the serious questions as to why we are currently in a shambolic situation in trying to finalise a 25man squad?
Looking like having to get 3 Scottish players in, just to fill our homegrown quota?
And all of next week, Rodgers will be hiding in the background with it being Glasgow Derby week?
Yet, when the highly likely situation arises, of not getting a finalised 25man squad in position for ourselves, then the board will receive the venom, while Rodgers sits back playing the poor me?
Utter bullshit, Rodgers hasn’t made any decisions of any real note throughout the whole of this window?
Done nothing in regards of actually making decisions for identifying the players that were required?
Plenty of rumours without any substance whatsoever for the whole of the summer?
If this window remains as shambolic as it has been to date, then fail to see how anyone can claim Rodgers hands remains clean?
Especially when he is failing in his duties in making decisions upon identification of players required in forming and finalising a 25man squad that’s he’s responsible for doing?
Looking more likely that the board will have to try and bail out Rodgers more like?
Hopefully it doesn’t come to this, and everything should get resolved?
But creating nothing more than a blame game for the current shambolic nature that the whole summer has provided to date, is a total disgrace at present?
And no excuse available for those responsible either, which includes Rodgers and his role within it also?
They are paying Brendan FOUR MILLION POUNDS A YEAR “Oh they better back him” Would you put your big boy pants on and stop the petty greeting about BS for once in your life, Jesus wept man, You’re talking like the board have been camped outside Brighton waiting on them opening. This is an embarrassment every other day its someone else “Oh the board, the board, the board the board” and half the time its folk who grew up on stories about the bad board of the 90’s and think a quadruple treble is ANYTHING SIMILAR and they think they’re the people to fix it, people who can’t read a bloody report on what’s actually going on with transfers but think they know all about everything and anything, GROW UP man.
So in one article you are extoling the virtues of “quietly going about our business” in the transfer market when comparing the signing of Maeda, Hatate and O’Riley to Rangers’ signing of Aaron Ramsey but in this atricle it’s back to “face the backlash” etc.,
I understand the nervousness of a transfer window and the reputation we have for being slow in signing players but this repetitive shaming of the board and the players we do sign is verging on double standards.
We can recall last year when we signed Adam Idah and it was all cat-caling the board for the quality of player we signed yet fast forward to this year and we are clamouring for him to be signed on a permanent basis on the back of some decent substitute appearance and some critical goals.
The business we have done over the years is quite admirable and the success we have had (outwith our dismal performances in Europe) is a credit to the board. Do they deserve to be held to account? absolutely, but the knee-jerkers that rock up every transfer window are as predicatable as they are boring.
Oh, and yeah, I get that we need to strive to be better in Europe but realistically our ambitions are limited in that arena and we all know it.