Celtic’s former Head of Recruitment, Lee Congerton, has savaged the club’s signing policy in the years gone by and insisted he could have signed more stars of the future had they loosened the reins slightly when he worked in Scotland.
Congerton was of course drafted in by Brendan Rodgers during his first stint in the Parkhead hotseat and managed to snare Moussa Demeble and Odsonne Edouard amongst others.
However, the longer into Rodgers’ tenure at that time, the clearer it was for Lee that he couldn’t work under the restraints imposed by the bean counters at Celtic Park. Peter Lawwell was CEO for a number of years at Paradise and one of the major gripes with the club under his tutelage was the lack of imagination and clear strategy in the transfer market when it came to signing players.
Its been a consistent theme of modern Celtic and Rodgers fell foul of the frugal ways impacted on he footballing department by the man upstairs. Looking back on his time at the club a few years back, our former employee said: “At Celtic we had no money. Peter Lawwell is a nice man, he’s an accountant.
“Brendan spoke to me and said we needed pace and power, speed. We all know PSG has an amazing youth programme with players at the time who were never going to play for PSG,” he said to The Telegraph.
The Chief Scout even revealed that two prominent superstars in world football were on the radar, but reading between the lines, the club wouldn’t support the moves. Likewise, there were players brought into the Champions that Congerton wouldn’t touch with a barge pole.
He added: “Two of the other players we tried to sign during my time were [Moussa] Diaby, who is now at Aston Villa, and [Christopher] Nkunku who is now at Chelsea.
“But there were several players I didn’t want to be anywhere near them and that is why I left. Peter knows that and so did Brendan. Atalanta is very different.
Congerton of course is is telling his side of the story and we can post to the likes of Marvin Compper to counter his own argument that presumably Maryan Shved, who presumably was a Peter Lawwell signing because he clearly was not a Rodgers/ Congerton selection.
Lee Congerton, perhaps misunderstood the market Celtic were operating in and while Celtic did not have the money to match the English Premier league sides , the club were able to sign players of sufficient quality before and after he had a go at it – Virgil van Dijk anyone?
Paul Gillespie
It’s very easy for Congerton to point fingers where he knows some, in fact many fans would love to see blame go. But the fact is that Lee Congertonis dodging accountability for his failures. He did a poor job and that, is a fact! Don’t blame Lawwell or anyone else! Congerton was pulling in a hefty salary so he should have had a pair of cojones big enough to stand his ground instead of throwing his toys out of the baby buggy after it went wrong! When your choices are failures, you can’t point fingers at everyone else! You are ready to take the glory if things go well, so you have to prepared to hold up your hands if they don’t.