If last week’s ignominious exit from the Champions league wasn’t bad enough we had the unseemly post-match reaction from Neil Lennon where – in what appeared to be a deflection from his own tactical failings – he publicly called certain players out, some for their performance on the night such as Hatem abd Elhamed – who bar his out of character error for the goal had actually played well – and others for apparently having one eye on pastures new at the end of the transfer window.
My own reaction, under the influence and anger of another self-inflicted Champions League exit, was to want the players, whoever they may be, shown the door. To head for the new horizons, they wished to inhabit and to leave their damaging influence on the Celtic team behind. Yet with time to reflect you kind of start to think that this is what we sell to these players, the foreign players in particular. If anything, I started to believe we were the ones letting them down here and that to blame players for looking elsewhere may not be entirely fair.
I hold my hands up in terms of criticising two players in particular. Kris Ajer and Olivier Ntcham. Let’s take Ntcham first of all. Apart from the fact I think the calls for his regular inclusion in the side are based on the fact his style of play is aesthetically pleasing rather than being genuinely effective or consistent enough to warrant a regular staring eleven place, his discontent and public utterances to that effect last season got my back up.
I still remember the headline on this site in July 2019 and you can read the article using the link below.
Au revoir – Pusillanimous Ntcham Wants Away
Pusillanimous? No, me neither…faint-hearted, showing a lack of courage or determination; timid.
Since then – much like when Boyata was ‘injured’ when Fulham came knocking with a multi-million-pound bid for his services – I have had little trust in Ntcham. That may be unfair and it probably is. There have after all been times like when he ran the show against ‘the’ Rangers or scored ‘that’ goal in Rome where he’s been every inch the committed Celtic player but there was always that nagging doubt that he wanted out so let him.
With Kris Ajer it was his agent rather than him stating he would not be signing a contract under any circumstances that I took umbrage with. Despite a move to a new stable there still appeared no sign of Ajer willing to commit to a new deal. With a value diminishing by the day I felt a lack of commitment to the Celtic cause may as well see Celtic sign an alternative and maximise our income and cash in. Now I’m looking at things from a different perspective.
Celtic don’t and simply cannot fill our first team with 25-30-year-olds in the peak of their career, we cannot compete with the big five leagues and the 100 or so clubs that entails, not only outbidding us for the top established talents but also stockpiling the best up and coming crop. As such we need a selling point and this is where we are letting these players down.
We go to untapped markets or we find uncut gems and we go about polishing and developing them, making them players that we can then sell on. Not only do we do that we sell them just that. We don’t ask them to commit to Celtic long term, we sell the two, three, four years from a young age to the point we mould them into a better player. We then show them examples of Wanyama, Van Dijk, Armstrong and Dembele who came through our system and were sold on to the bigger leagues, a better standard of football and great wealth. We tell them we’ll give them shop window and point to current star Odsonne Edouard and show them the next in line, we tell these players that could be them.
These youngsters and their representatives know Celtic are a big club but are also acutely aware Scottish football is a footballing backwater. They know the exposure is limited in that league and as a trade-off we sell them regular European football, Champions League football or at worst the later stages of the Europa league. Season after season we’ll give them that exposure. Year after year we let them down.
There comes night’s like Ferencvaros, or Cluj on the back of AEK Athens and Malmo. Players may not be the brightest but agents aren’t daft. On all available evidence we’re now selling these players a pup and the penny is dropping. Is it any wonder player’s heads are being turned, and when they are is it really fair to blame them?
The Scottish core may buy into Ten-in-Row but is that enough for the players from abroad that we attract? Is it even enough for those who didn’t come through our academy like Ryan Christie, will it be enough for David Turnbull in the future?
Celtic’s business model is to buy these projects, develop them, showcase their talents and get them into premier European competition. We’ve sold them just that. Yet every year we are unprepared for European qualification.
That comes from poor player recruitment and a board slow to react, alongside the inability or unwillingness to learn from past mistakes. It’s not about spending fortunes it’s about preparing in advance. 18 months to two years in advance so squads are ready for early qualifiers and we are not working week to week reliant on ever more fluid transfer windows and inflating prices one at a time to fill this season’s roster. We fail to prepare and as such prepare to fail.
Celtic have now qualified the Champions League only twice in the last seven years. As such we are not giving players the window of opportunity, we promised them and it’s down to a lack of strategy, lack of recruitment and poor preparation.
Players will only get better by playing against the best, and here’s the thing. We will only get better as a club by attracting players and delivering on promises, by retaining as much of our squad as possible without selling unnecessarily because we fail year on year to reach £30million of an annual access to a money tree, one in Scottish football’s paucity of finance we can ill afford to miss out on.
Now, when we go to the next young players, are they going to be of Ntcham or Ajer’s or Christie’s or Edouard’s quality, or are the agents of the next group now going to warn in advance that the product being sold is not what it was before?
Celtic are not a Champion’s League club at this moment in time. Three consecutive years missing from that tournament means you are no longer entitled to call yourself that.
And all of that comes down to poor planning, and history repeating of the same old basic errors in a recruitment policy that is not proactive and entirely reactive.
When Neil Lennon called out those players who weren’t pulling their weight, those players and agents could easily have said that the club is letting them down. And you know what, we are.
We told them they could come here, develop and move on. Then we call them out for looking elsewhere, without considering that the reason their eyes are wandering is that we’re denying them the platform we promised them in the first place.
If Ajer, Ntcham or anyone else is looking elsewhere Celtic is in no position to be throwing them under the bus. We need to be looking as to the reasons for it. A series of broken promises is the starting point.
Niall J
ALSO ON THE CELTIC STAR…Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys – “St Bernard Battles, the Patron of Parkhead”
AND DON’T MISS THIS…Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys – Celtic’s first Broony one of five ex-Hibees chosen as the Irish clubs meet for the first time
