Celtic's 2025/26 Summer transfer window: Stage: Panic

But surely making any offer indicates we are interested in signing those players and trusting the scouting? I can't imagine why we would approach clubs with no idea how much to offer according to market value, and when told we are way off their valuation then go back in with a miniscule £250k improved bid even though the £4-5m is very much in our ballpark for first team signings and still way below what we raked in for our most recent departure in the same position.

The crux of the matter is we are guessing here as nobody seems to know or be able to reason why we are doing what we are (and aren't at times) doing in the market.

 

I think it's more the fact that Engels and Trusty have not delivered at total combined cost of £17M, that have put the frighteners on the Celtic Board.

My view is the Celtic Board still think Idah is a sellable asset, and are satisfied with his valuable contributions, helping us to win the Scottish Cup the year before last, his Champions League decisive goal, his two goals at Villa, and twenty goals from off the bench mostly last season.

The main job is convincing the Celtic Board to dig deep into their pockets again this season on that basis, and realise the renewed threat from the Huns under Martin, and the absolute necessity to win the Champions League qualifier.

 

To me if we are willing to sell one of our top performers the model has to be sell them but have players lined up who we know can replace them. Thats regardless of who they are whether it’s O’Riley, Kyogo, Kuhn, Jota or whoever. In each of those 4 recent cases we sold those players without replacements lined up. Even Christie we took £2m in Ange’s first summer over having a functional centre midfield for 6 months as we had no one immediately ready to come in when we signed that off.

The model to me is we need to have a really strong knowledge of where our squad is at, what’s the positions we want to improve regardless.

Then it’s who wants a move or is at peak value to actively look to sell. What sort of fee are we looking for and how much will we pay for a replacement? If we sell that player in Kuhn’s case for £17m and his replacement is to cost £7m, can we backfill two of our other wants for £5m each?

Who do we need to move on to make the wage room to that too? We have actually done that to a large extent this year.

So Como get close to our asking price we should be upping the ante on who we are bringing in for the wing. Put in a serious offer get permission to speak to the player know where they are at if they aren’t keen move on.

It sounds like Janssen at Rapid was our target but we had no idea how much they wanted and the players situation.

To have sold Kuhn for what we did about a fortnight ago and the deal having been all but agreed closer to a month ago and be where we are is totally unacceptable and incompetent.

It is hard definitely, transfers aren’t easy but you have a CEO and Finance Director leading our negotiations team costing more than £1m a year they are meant to be top performers not some comedy show bidding 20% of a targets asking price. Scrambling about getting laughed at by other footballing directors.

However, there are things we are in a position to control and those running our club are actively choosing not to make an effort to.

 

There is a lot of faux outrage from sections of our support when it comes to transfers.

If we have a * window but go on to have a decent start to the league and/or beat the Huns, they’ll just revert to type (happy clapping).

It would take us losing the league this year, like the Covid season, for the whole support to be united in their demands for wholesale changes from top to bottom.

 

In the global game, the really isn't any excuse as to why we cant find new players.

Don't get me wrong, the money in the game is making it more and more difficult when the market is seeing guys like Charalampos Kostoulas (despite being so widely rated within the game as an upcoming talent) is moving for near £30mill and barely turning 18 and going to the EPL from Greece.

But good lord. We are far to slow in the market in finding first 11 quality players. Knowing we could do with strengthening at CB and our answer is a loan without any purchase for a Man City youth prospect.

Of all the players in the world, that is the best we can source?

I'm trying not to get to despondent about it until at least around 10th August but im starting to struggle. Which seems to be the ongoing theme among most people in this forum now.

 

It doesnt feel like we have put in an offer of over 3M for anyone so far this Summer? It really just feels like the club got a bit of business done early and said right we have loads of time now - lets see who we can get for the bare minimum spend over the next number of weeks. They have got nowhere with it and wasted the chance to get some recruits settled in when August has some really significant fixtures. Its barely treading water domestically never mind looking to progress in Europe.

Maybe they will come good towards the end of the window and the intention is there to strengthen further. But if thats the case then I dont know why they at least attempt to put out some reassurances instead of leaving everybody to stew.

 

That ASCOM podcast said we could have got Engels for £8m and Idah for less as well but Desmond has final say on our threshold for fees and he stalled negotiations. Then we couldn’t anyone else so ended up overpaying because time was against us.

All speculation but would 100% believable based on how we operate.

 

As it stands now, were we to actually qualify for the CL - we would prob be spending twice as much in tax as what we are offering for the Bruem chap.

 

Harry Brady said that weeks ago on the CU/Huddle Breakdown podcast weeks ago

 

Again, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying at all.

There’s no set process/schedule for transfers though. Us making an initial offer can be the first step in some cases, whereas in others we could already have spoken to an agent and received a pretty accurate representation of the club’s demands before we make contact. Similarly, there’s no set valuation tool - a player is effectively worth what his club claim him to be worth.

It may well be the case with Breum that we put in a bid purely to get his club to the table and get an idea of what they’re looking for. That first bid may have been rejected out of hand, rather than them giving us a figure, so we’ve gone back with a (quite embarrassing) improved offer. Perhaps those tactics worked in getting us an idea of what they’ll accept and perhaps all they done was * off the player’s club.

Also, just because we bid for a player doesn’t mean he’s our first choice. We have (probably too many) irons in the fire.

We have a total scattergun approach to business and I certainly get the feeling we’d be an absolute pain in the * to deal with.

 

Question.

With the ability Inamura appears to have on the ball, picking passes, as well as looking like something who is happy getting involved in a tackle and leaving his mark.

Assuming we actually put some * effort into supplementing the CB and LB positions (i know, im clearly expecting too much) could Inamura not be a rotation option for McGregor.

Or

Maybe help act as a deeper 2 in midfield when we need to be a bit more solid in midfield with guys like Hatate, Nygren and Maeda then offering an attacking outlet?

 

You should know by now that our shysters on the board already think that we expect too much

 

Yeah at this point im fully expecting we lose Rodgers, get in Broony as the new manager, have Lennon (not the covid implosion)/Deila like season where we are clearly downsizing despite record revenue and profits being seen by the club.

Inevitably Broony gets the boot and then suddenly the board go once again, in getting in a new guy and suddenly, for one season, looking like we got our * together with a great summer transfer window.

Rinse
Repeat

 

Just a few short days remain until Celtic unfurl the Premiership flag and get the new season officially underway.
The team on the pitch will receive the same raucous love from the stands when St Mirren come to town, but keep eyes and ears open for some not-so-supportive noises where the money-men are concerned.
The transfer window has been a major bone of contention for punters with the signings of Kieran Tierney, Shin Yamada, Benji Nygren and Hayato Inamura not enough to appease.
Brendan Rodgers wants more in the door - two wingers and another frontman - but with four days left before the beginning of the campaign, they won't arrive in time.
We exclusively told you about Celtic's interest in centre-half Jahmai Simpson-Pusey from Manchester City before anyone else and now we can delve further into that potential deal as well as others involving the Hoops…

Jahmai Simpson-Pusey
The 19-year-old has entered discussions with Celtic and the interest is real from Parkhead. Rodgers has always wanted defensive cover with Maik Nawrocki and Gus Lagerbielke gone and the City centre-half was quickly identified.
It's believed Celts hope Champions League football - or at least European minutes - will push them in front of the queue of other suitors. But we understand there is strong interest from clubs down south who could still compete.

Stefan Bajcetic
Rumours were rampant this morning regarding the Spanish midfielder at Liverpool with suggestions that Celts had already initiated contact with the Premier League giants.
Fans allowed themselves to get excited with the 20-year-old's profile seemingly fitting the bill.
However, sources have revealed to us that no approach has been made at this time by Celtic where Bajcetic is concerned.

Michel-Ange Balikwisha
It's a long-running saga now but the winger is still seemingly a target for Celts according to reports in Belgium as well as in the Scottish mainstream media.
Sources in Belgium indicated to us that Balikwisha would NOT join Celtic back on July 2 and we're hard pressed to remember a positive update since then. It remains to be seen whether or not Michael Nicholson can get Royal Antwerp back to the table before time runs out.


Jakub Breum
Three bids from Celtic were lowball efforts and Go Ahead Eagles were not happy. The Dutch club put a price on their winger's head of around £6.5million and the best Scotland's champions could do was £3m.
Breum has other options on the table now from FC Twente who have already bid more than Celtic with their first attempt, so this one might not go Celtic's way.


Lennon Miller
Celtic have not come back to the table for Motherwell's star this summer. It may seem like a bit of a no-brainer for a homegrown talent who, again, would not break the bank. But the Hoops are content to allow the 19-year-old to make the move abroad with Bologna believed to be keen.



Yang
Legia Warsaw are still interested in the wide man but we can reveal exclusively that Norwich City have bowed out of the race to sign the player.

 

That is possibly the most depressing read yet. We are not really in for anyone other than a loan from Man City.

 

Aye it’s getting pish now

 

There's also the possibility the press don't have a clue, who we're looking at..

 

Just, wow!

Our main winger we are after, have been for a year, that is injury prone and no one is too keen on, we haven't been near in a month.
The rest is basically non-starters with the exception of the city loan effort.

Well done Cetic