Lee Naylor was the special guest on the Celtic Huddle this afternoon – the last Podcast of the season from the guys, It’s certainly been a great addition to the online Celtic media with its mix of ex-players, sprinkled with a legend every so often, and some decent insight from Celtic minded journalists.
Today host Mark Wilson was joined nay Celtic Huddle regular Simon Donnelly and journalist John McGarry from Scottish Daily Mail while the special guest was former Hoops left-back Lee Naylor, who Wilson described as “a former team-mate of mine who won League titles and played in the Champions League with the Hoops.”
Naylor is now an agent. He tried to get a few of his players into Celtic this season but had no joy. He believes that Neil Lennon had little to do with the decisions on recruitment as the DIY DoF was holding the purse strings and running the show.
Naylor reckons the Ten was lost before a ball was kicked as Celtic kept ahold of so many players who wanted away. Add that to an absolute disastrous season in terms of recruitment and the over-reliance on loan players of dubious quality then that right there is a recipe for turning a 13 point winning margin last year into a 25 point deficit this time around. Truly shocking.
“The only positive is now knowing who to get rid of. On the pitch there’s nothing much they can take – but at least now they can rebuild. They’ll know who wants to be at Celtic and they can clear out those who don’t.
“The signs were there at the start of the season. When you have that many people who want to leave, subconsciously you can’t do it on the pitch. If there’s interest in that many players, the time was right to make change then. We tried to keep hold of too many players to get 10 in a row and it ended up hurting us.
“As a club you should be preparing for the future. Celtic have always had two or three coming through from the youth ranks and putting their foot in the deep water with the first team.
“You’d then have three or four signings in the summer coming on to strengthen the side. But it’s clear the recruitment wasn’t good enough – it was way off.
“You can cope with one or two wanting to leave and you can get through the season. But when you have five or six who want out the door, there’s no way you can recover. On top of that, players coming in have been well below par – so you are always heading for a downfall.”
“To assess who is leaving would be the first port of call and then it’s bringing in players early. You look at centre midfield, striker, maybe a winger first of all. There’s the goalkeeper, if you spent four or five million on a guy you are not that keen on, you need to get him out and bring in another one.
“To be at Celtic you need a certain mentality to understand what’s needed to be a Celtic player. You need people who understand what it takes to be a winner.”
An interesting snippet right at the end from Lee Naylor on the Celtic Huddle today. The former Celtic full-back is now an agent and he revealed that he put forward some players to Celtic last year but had no joy. He reckons that Neil Lennon had little say on recruitment last season, so if it wasn’t the manager making the calls on the recruitment THEN WHO THE HELL WAS IT? That’s rhetorical. The 1st July can’t come quickly enough.
“I don’t think Lenny had much say, especially this season,” Naylor stated.“I’ll have a few lined up this summer. It will be interesting to see who takes the reins. I just need to know who to speak to!”
Watch the Celtic Huddle’s final podcast of the season below…
David Potter appeared as a guest on The Celtic History Podcast this afternoon (listen above). Throughout the episode, he discussed his latest publication and bequeathed listeners with some sensational stories about a man who ranks among the finest to ever pass through Parkhead’s gates.
The podcast is not to be missed. It is available on various platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Anchor FM.
To purchase your copy of the book, click on the image below.
