CHRIS SUTTON has said that Neil Lennon should have named and shamed those players that wanted to leave the club instead of allowing us all to speculate.
Sutton, who spent six years in Glasgow, has always been a vocal supporter of the club but is quick to call out the inadequacies and shortcomings emanating from Celtic Park. Wednesday night highlighted a number of them and Sutton summed up the situation as well as most supporters probably could during BT Sport’s Scottish Football Extra programme.
“This is the problem, the fact that he didn’t name names.
“Because we are now speculating.
“I think in fairness to Odsonne Edouard, one of his representatives came out and said it’s not crucial for him to be playing in the Champions League.”
Edouard’s representative will speak to Celtic and hopefully thrash out a lucrative new deal as the Frenchman targets 10IAR for the club before departing. The same cannot be said for players like Kris Ajer – who is being targeted by Southampton in a £20m swoop.
Another issue that Sutton spoke about was the lack of preparation at the club in recent years going into these qualifiers. As a result of various risks, the club have slowly regressed in European football.
“The bigger picture and the biggest issue is failing to prepare and responsibility has to be taken right at the top and filtered all the way through.
“This has been coming for years, we had O’Connell and Bitton the centre-half partnership in Astana. Janko playing against Beer Sheva.
“Celtic have been knocked out by Malmo, by Maribor. They should be doing better.
“It’s a bad, bad situation Celtic have found themselves in and they need to respond and they need to respond quickly.”
Celtic have once again stalled in their recruitment drive. Albian Ajeti, Vasilis Barkas and Moi Elyounoussi have all signed but it took a while yet Celtic look short in a few positions.
