BRENDAN RODGERS has insisted that he has the final say on all transfer deals and has also stuck-up for his under fire head of recruitment.
The Celtic support simply does not rate the job that Lee Congerton appears to be doing and he’s been blamed for some poor signings such as Marvin Compper and Charly Musonda.
Firstly on who has the last word, Brendan cleared that up after his own midweek comments re-ignited the debate. Is it his call?
“Yes. Absolutely. It will come to me in the process,” Brendan told yesterday’s media conference.
“I’ll look at him and see where he’s at and then we decide from there.
“What I said the other night was we were presented with a young player who is a talent. I was being honest. I’m not going to say I’ve been tracking the boy for six months.
“I don’t need a winger now but Maryan is a talent and if the club sign him then we’ll look at a development plan, whether it’s coming in now or going on loan to play games.
“It should be done at the beginning of the week and we’ll go from there.
“I just happen to know the agent from my time at Liverpool and I know he has a good reputation.
“It’s an opportunity the club could look at, and you make a decision.
“You’ll find in this window there are circumstances where that will happen.
“If your processes are right you’ll have tracked players for a number of months.
“But sometimes an opportunity comes to you to get a talented young player and you have to make a decision.”
On Congerton, Brendan has been surprised at the stick his head of recruitment takes at Celtic – not something we’ve got involved in on The Celtic Star incidentally.
“I’ve never known a head of recruitment get criticised the way he does.
“So I’m not sure where the stories come from. Because I’ve never known it. It’s unfair. Whether it was John Park or Lee or whoever, it’s not an easy job being head of recruitment at a club like Celtic.
“The expectancy here is to do well not just domestically but in Europe — but you don’t have those resources.
“There are constraints and there is the finance.
“But Lee helped bring in the likes of Odsonne Edouard and Filip Benkovic. He does a great job with the resources he works with.
“Lee obviously has to scour the market and in terms of recruitment, it’s probably never been more difficult.
“He puts in a lot of miles, a lot of hours and of course the torch gets shone on him.
“But it’s very unfair because, a lot of the time, he’ll find players we just can’t bring in.
“His job is to find the players and, in his time here, he’s done that.
“Now whether we get them here or not is a different story. But players he identifies are exactly what we need as a team.
“Once he’s found them and recommended them, that’s where he’s away. He’s out of it then.
“But, listen, the regular supporter wouldn’t know the operation.
“And when one or two get emotional in the media and start to point fingers, that can snowball.
“Lee is very talented. He hasn’t worked in the game for this period of time without having that talent.
“But he loves it. He enjoys working here and he’ll continue to work tirelessly with his staff.
“I know how it is now, supporters want to see that yellow bar on the TV screen saying Celtic have signed some player and everything is perfect.
“But there’s a lot of tireless work that goes in to looking at players. It’s then, are they available and can we afford them?
“If we can, the club will do the best they can to bring them in. The key ingredient has to be quality.”
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