Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

At this stage in July im fairly relaxed still..

However with a Champions League Qualifier on the horizon it would be a gamble not to get our business done as early as possible.

We will haggle over the price when there's literally 10s of £millions at stake.

KT is a most welcome addition, yet we're still weak in that position.

We also need a CB and DM of genuine quality as well as the 2 x wingers you mention. Difficult to say how much better we are at ST too.

We've also seen this movie before, so some of the nervousness is understandable.

 

You always find in here the panic starts going up when the huns are doing a shopping spree. Ofcourse we'll sign a couple more. Folk need to chill

 

Well said. We take care of CL, that'll be more than enough for the league and like you said, we're gambling with this currently. Of course theres a little under 2 months to go, but CL qualifiers doesn't afford us that luxury.

Like @Officer Doofy said yesterday, do we want folk in for a full pre-season, hit the ground running for the season, or do we remain patient and take the gamble and go right to the end.

Folk get annoyed as they've seen this script before. There's a massive opportunity to kick on, but we don't due to a parochial set up behind the scenes.

Now is the time to be pushing ahead with 1st team signings, which we're still light of at least 3 there.

 

We’re currently in the transfer window’s liminal space, stuck between complaining that we’re signing punts (who are available) and complaining that we’re not making more ready-made signings (who aren’t yet widely available).

It’s a kind of weird paradox where a lot of our fans would probably feel more optimistic if we hadn’t signed anyone yet (except KT), rather than convincing ourselves that we’re shopping in the bargain bin by getting our “projects and squad fillers” in the door early. The reality is we’re probably in a stronger position to push on with “bigger” signings because the smaller ones are already done.

Patience is the key to bringing in quality.

 

Qaulity has options. It takes time to get them over the line. Tbh I like the business we've done so far as long as we get a couple real gems in before the end I'll be happy.

 

That first point is a really good one and one I tend to forget. Whenever I see someone clearly buzzing just to be at Celtic, I know I probably need to adjust my expectations for them downwards. Of course, there are obvious exceptions with Celtic fans like McCowan or special circumstances like Jota returning; but I'm thinking of things like Lagerbielke looking like he'd won the lottery when he signed. In general, it's a good rule of thumb.

 

We don’t have the benefit of direct qualification to CL to wait around till the last week though. Our qualifier is 19/20 August that means to give ourselves the best possible chance we need the bulk of signings in at least 1/2 weeks prior.

So realistically start of August when the domestic fixtures start. That’s only 3 and a bit weeks away. It’s not as far away as we would like to think.

Yes we can still get players after the qualifier but I’d really only want us to be gambling on 1/2 first team players that we can then attract with CL football. All others should be in before then.

 

Id love to feel that optimistic. I tend to think the opposite. We have had 7 months and two windows to replace Kyogo, so when I see us sign 2 free/cheap stikers I assume its less likely we replace kyogo properly. That just feels more likely than assuming we are bringing in someone now that could be 4th choice by the end of the window.

We have sniffed around Kvistgaarden for 2 years and Norwich just went and signed him for 7m. Weve brought in a 23 year old defender from japan for 250k. Spurs just spent 5m bringing in Takai - same position same league, younger with greater experience and pedigree. So there is clearly realistic options out there.

I might be wrong of course and will happily eat my hat if I am. But I feel pretty pesimistic watching us load up on cheap punts while we say goodbye to previous season cheap punts. We have seen the movie before.

 

Yeah, thats fair. We are ultimately only going on limited info and giving opinons on players we havent seen and know little about. And Kvist and Takai are just anecdoetal examples. But I still dont see much thrust to improve. The theme still feels like we sell a player for 10m, replace him for 2. Sell a player for 17m buy one for 2.

If we keep a hold of our main players from last season, I wont be overly negative, just not very excited. But we are only a CCV and Maeda injury or transfer away from suddenly looking very very mediocre going into european qualifiers.

 

I hope he drawing up plans to get best out idah this year. We need play to his strengths and you see goals flow.

 

Massive season for Idah imo if he wants to make it here. Had high hopes for him when we signed him like most of us but despite his decent goal return he's still been a bit underwhelming so far, hopefully an undisturbed pre-season will get him on the right track.

 

It would be interesting to see our fail/sucess rate against similar sized teams. It feels like our model is based on accepting a high fail rate in volume terms but our successes are sometimes exceptional.

Im certainly not against a punt or two, I just think sometimes we get the balance wrong which bloats our squad and we end up squadering a sizable amount on too many 'cheap' options. Given the money we have, there is no reason why our young higher risk/reward signings shouldnt be in that Takai/Kvist mould (to be fair the Engels/CCV/Bernardo mould). We really need to get incredibly lucky if we are bringing in guys like Imamura and Yamada and they end up improving us at any point in their time here.

 

Unfortunately, given our position in having CL qualifiers, time is of the essence and we need the bodies in the door and ready to play in these big games.

If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that we can’t go into these games short or ill prepared. I remember games when we have played players out of position and signed players who were deemed to be of ‘quality’ but were not fit for the games. See Ajeti for example.

The players we have signed may all turn out to be successes in their own right, but I still don’t think fans can be blamed for wanting a little bit more ambition from the board in terms of some of our targets.

We also can’t be scrambling at the close of the window to bring in players at it leaves us open to being exploited by the selling club.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that at any time a club can come in and potentially take away one of our star players, or them wanting away which can change the whole complex of a window. Dembele comes to mind.

it still wouldn’t surprise me if Maeda left us in this window, which I hope the board have made a contingencies for.

 

Respectfully, this is wrong.
Acting swiftly, positively and securing your top targets before increasing transfer fees and rival interest is the key.
We are so feckin slow, tight and indecisive we miss our key targets and then scramble for the scraps at the end of the window.

Identify the right players, go and get them - even if we have to pay a bit more than is 'comfortable' and get it done early in window.

 

I’m not saying you’re wrong because of course that can happen too, but the majority of our targets are holding out for a “bigger” move at least by the time we get round to bidding.

It could certainly be argued that we’re not identifying these players early enough, or at least taking too long to go from recognising their talent to actually trying to bring then in. I’m not denying that at all. I’ve often been critical of how outdated our approach to recruitment is. Until something fundamentally changes within our scouting and recruitment set up though, I think patience is our best hope.

 

Needs to come out and address his future before our first game of the season imo. The ambiguity absolutely kills us if not. Any negativity in performance or recruitment will be blamed on it if he doesn’t say anything.

Our transfer activity would point in the direction of him being away, i think if i was him in a professional viewpoint, I would look at the recruitment and say how far can it be pushed if we can’t operate at even a 25% hit ratio on players coming in. I argue we spend usually at a fair rate but 20m on Engels and Idah is absolutely hopeless work.

 

I think if we sold both players tomorrow we would get our money back on Engels at least, so in that regard I dont think it has been hopeless. To me, he is the exact mould of player we should be targeting. Not all will be successes but we gove ourselves a better chance than with scattergun 1m punts here and there.

...can disagree on Idah. And like you I expect Rodgers to go at the end of this season