The Celtic players and staff are taking a well earned break after the 2024/25 campaign drew to a close over the weekend. Despite the disappointment of a Scottish Cup Final defeat on penalties to Aberdeen, Brendan Rodgers’ side enjoyed an excellent campaign, winning the Premiership by 17 points, winning the League Cup and reaching the knockouts in the UEFA Champions League for the first time in 12 years.
While the dust settles on the last campaign, Celtic will be working towards the new campaign by shaping the first team squad to prepare the manager for another tilt at European football as well as continuing domestic dominance.
According to Sky Sports’ Anthony Joseph, plans have been written up for the summer recruitment drive as Celtic look to strengthen in a number of key areas.
Kieran Tierney will return to the club from Arsenal in a brilliant move by the club. The 27-year-old scored on his Arsenal farewell and will return to his boyhood club in the summer, despite lucrative offers to keep him in England or take him to Spain or Italy. Celtic will also require another wide option as they deal with Jota’s absence from the first team after the superstar from Portugal suffered a knee injury.
Celtic’s main focus will be filling the striking role vacated by Kyogo, who left for Rennes in January. Celtic are expected to revisit their interest in Mathias Kvistgaarden this summer as the manager prioritises the signing of a striker. The 23-year-old has scored 47 goals and assisted on 19 occasions in 126 appearances for the Danish outfit but with two years left on his deal, they move look to cash in on the forward.
Kvistgaarden has been Celtic’s striking target since Rodgers’ first season at the club. The Dane appeared to say farewell to Brondby’s fans over the weekend, suggesting that a summer move is in the offing. Celtic will face competition for the player and it is expected that Brondby will anticipate £10m for the striker.
Looks like Mathias Kvistgaarden is set to leave in the summer 👀 pic.twitter.com/kVn5dK7iWJ
— Eryk Szymczak (@SzymczakEryk) May 25, 2025
Moreover, Celtic are expected to allow Luis Palma, Gustaf Lagerbielke, Stephen Welsh, Hyeok-kyu Kwon and Marco Tilio to leave the club if offers come in. All of which spent periods of the last season on loan, signifying their lack of involvement under Brendan. The Irishman will be keen to trim his squad and bring quality players into the first team to enable Celtic to compete on all fronts next campaign.
The club will seek to tie down Reo Hatate, Daizen Maeda and Nicolas Kühn to longterm deals to maximise their value and ward off interest from across Europe for the key trio. Hatate, along with Jota, was a big miss in the SCF penalties loss to Aberdeen given that his flair was missing from the middle of the park. Hatate has shown this season that he can do both sides of the game well and that Celtic are a better team with him in their starting XI.
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This is dumb! Kvistgarden is not coming, he has ambitions for top 5 league, priced at 10 million and with career stats comparable to Idah. Us even thinking of going for him should result in the sacking of our scouting team.
Give Kenny and Cummings senior contracts and we will have two options that are likely to perform at or better than Kvistgarden and at a fraction of the wage bill, meet our local quota and leave us cash to fill the positions where we are in dire need. Such as:
At least one centrehalf.
An Enforcer to stop teams marking Cal Mac out of games.
A creative playmaker that can open up teams that play like the Dons and Huns do against us, with a clever flick, pin point pass or jinking run through the defence.
A solid youthful left back. We all love Tierney and it’s a lovely heart warming gesture having him come back but let’s face it, everything points to him being injured more than on the pitch.
Schlupp is too old and seems to get confused once an opposition player gets inside the box. He should only be signed in a free with a wage around 9 to 10 grand a week. $15 thou is where the nucleus of our squad sit and this guy is not going to give us the value of any of those guys but watch us sign him and pay him more than Hatate or Kuhn.
That is the minimum we need but we will instead overpay for positions we don’t need filled, bring in a few has been that Rodgers had some connection to 15 years ago.
I love this club with my heart and soul, have done since before the parents of our current players were even born and it makes me ill that we continue on with an owner that doesn’t care about the club just his bank balance, a corrupt incompetent fool like Lawell and a guy who’s idea of management is to just tell the team to keep possession, even if we do nothing with it just pass it backwards.
There was a glimmer of hope early when Ange ball was melded with Rodgers possession ball but by Xmas Rodgers had the same old stale style that blew 10 in a row.
Then we let our star Stricker slip out in the middle of the campaign whilst still in Europe. Then we spend ridiculous money on an unproven midfielder that wouldn’t get on the bench if we had the team we did 4 or 5 years ago. Then a striker that has an bang average record through out his career and wasn’t even good enough to be fourth choise at Norwich.