Celtic are spending like a club going through a bout of buyer’s remorse. The irritation and regret of the shopper who feels like they’ve paid too much for slightly faulty goods.
Last summer, Scotland’s champions came under pressure to smash the piggy bank with a hammer.
Criticised for a lack of signings in the January window, chairman Peter Lawwell acknowledged the ‘inherent inefficiencies’ of hoarding £67.3million in savings. It made more sense to spend the money on players than it did to hand a chunk over to HMRC in corporation tax.
To that end the Parkhead board started throwing money at players. They broke their transfer record once to sign Adam Idah from Norwich for a fee close to £9m. They repeated the trick when they took an £11m punt on Belgian midfielder Arne Engels.
By the time they’d added American defender Auston Trusty for £5.5m, Brendan Rodgers looked like a man who’d rolled the dice and won a fiscal power struggle with the people who think the club should stick to buying cheap, selling big and stockpiling punts like
Gustaf Lagerbielke and Yang Hyun-jun in the hope of peeling away the wrapper one day and finding a Matt O’Riley underneath.
How different it all looks now. Despite a respectable tally of 21 goals, Idah is no one’s idea of a first-choice starting striker. Given a full pre-season Engels may yet deliver a decent return on the sizeable investment in his services, but has still to scale the heights. If an English club offered Celtic their money back on Trusty, you suspect they’d snap their hand off.
If Dermot Desmond has made up his mind that Celtic are simply no good at spending large sums of money then the solution shouldn’t be a return to the days of raking around the bargain bin for players of £3million or less.
In a market turbo-charged by middle eastern oil money that doesn’t buy you much, and it makes more sense to fine-tune the recruitment process until they master the art of spending their Champions League windfalls wisely.
It’s not as if they’re running out of cash. Celtic could feasibly became the first Scottish club to store up bank reserves of £100m in the near future. And, while UEFA’s financial sustainability rules will limit spending on player wages, transfer fees and agent fees to 70 per cent of a club’s revenue, the champions are in no danger of landing an expensive slap on the wrists from Europe’s governing body. They’re too cautious for that.
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The spending hasn’t dried up completely. They’ve completed a £20m upgrade of their Barrowfield training centre. The wages committed to Kieran Tierney’s return, meanwhile, represent a significant financial commitment for a team in the Scottish Premiership. Throw in the signings of Swedish attacker Benjamin Nygren, Fulham prospect Calum Osman, back-up keeper Ross Doohan and Japanese defender Hoyata Inamura, and they’ve gone earlier than usual.
Rodgers claims there is still plenty going on in the background and perceptions of a window can change quickly.
By the end of August they could add another three or four marquee signings and supporters could be cock-a-hoop over with the business done.
Given the lack of trust fans have in the board, few are getting their hopes up.
Over the years Celtic’s fear of missing out on Champions League money has fostered a level of caution which makes that very scenario more likely. Hoarding millions in the bank further risks nudging Rodgers towards the door next summer.
The current window is likely to have a bearing on his decision and they’re hardly going the extra mile to keep him.
Financially secure, he doesn’t need the job or the pressure. Family factors and the familiarity of six years in Glasgow will be other considerations and, while he deliberates, Celtic might be reluctant to hand millions and millions of pounds to a manager yet to commit. Ironically, that reluctance to give him the backing he needs to sign the players that he wants makes it more likely that he’ll leave.
He did it once before. And the longer this situation rumbles on, the more Rodgers’ words, soundbites and body language will be studied with forensic intensity for evidence of a clue to his innermost thoughts.
When Inamura, a 23-year-old defender from Japan, pitched up before the pre-season friendly against Queen’s Park, the manager gave the impression that his input into the signing had been limited.
Asked if Inamura would be ready to go straight into the first team Rodgers replied: “No, he won’t be. He’s a part of the investment of the club.”
While he softened his comments after a promising debut for the Japanese defender against Cork City, the episode felt like a flashback to Marian Shved the Ukrainian winger who came, saw, and left after three appearances.
While Tierney and Nygren should improve the team which finished the Scottish Cup final defeat to Aberdeen with Jonny Kenny up front, Greg Taylor in midfield and Yang shanking cross after cross off the pitch, it’s hard to say for certain that the starting XI is significantly better.
Online, fans are already bickering over the area where the need to strengthen is most great. Some say attack, some say defence. Despite winning a double last season, there’s a case for saying they’re both right.
Two wingers, a central defender, a contingency for the potential departure of Reo Hatate and a proper goal scorer is baked in. Depending on how Inamura shapes up, they could still bring in another left-back with reports in Belgium linking Flavio Nazinho of Cercle Brugge.
Do all that for less than the £17m they’ve raked in for Kuhn and fiscal caution will start to look like a high-risk gamble.
In the summer of 2014, Celtic lost a Champions League qualifier to Maribor of Slovenia and 200 angry supporters gathered in the car park.
Frustrated by a perceived lack of spending on players, Lawwell was forced to address the frustration by making a commitment. In a question-and-answer session, the current chairman pledged that every penny Celtic earned would be reinvested.
“In terms of investment our policy, our commitment, is that every penny that comes into the club will be reinvested, it will go back into the club,’ said the then CEO. “I do not think we can be clearer than that. There is no pile of cash sitting there that we can look at, watch, feel and touch. It doesn’t exist.”
Fast-forward 11 years and Celtic’s rainy day fund could insulate them from the impact of a tsunami. While cash in the bank dropped to £65.4m at December 31 last year, they’ve since raked in tens of millions from the Champions League. They’ve sold their top striker Kyogo Furuhashi to Rennes for £10m, Kuhn to Como, and cashed in a hefty £5m sell-on clause from Jeremie Frimpong’s move to Liverpool.
That’s a lot of money to reinvest in the club. If keeping the manager is the name of the game, they really should get cracking.
