What’s our scouting and recruitment plan?

Head examined is a bit dramatic, don't you think?

Forster is the perfect example of a successful loan deal. Pretty much single-handedly won us a cup final. Yes, we didn't manage to sign him afterward, but he was undoubtedly successful on the football pitch. We're football fans, not business men, if a player comes in and materially contributes to us winning trophies, plays well, excites us, then of course they're a success.

Would it be more ideal to sign them permanently? Yes, but it doesn't mean they were failed signings.

Don't get me wrong, most of your list I agree with, however, Forster, Roberts, Elyounoussi etc. Those aren't fails.

 

If we lock them down to 2 year loans or loans to buy I’d say it’s always a success for a player potentially out of our reach. Our best of the best players only stay for 2 seasons max so it’s not always a bad thing a long term loan.

I think due to ffp loopholes it’s rare for clubs to now do loans longer than a year though. (Not sure exactly why)

 

Getting your head examined is no more harsher than you saying I was talking rubbish.

I completely disagree with your opinion, for a club like Celtic - Forster in his second loan spell is an example of a failed loan deal. Can you tell me what happened the following season after Forster decided he didn't want to sign on permanently. Did we have a major issue with our goalkeeping position? Did our season turn into turmoil? Putting sticky plasters over key areas is kicking the can down the road. No progressive club opts for this, it's for clubs who are in financial difficulty or trying to survive, not clubs trying to build for success.

Elyonoussi was a fail. Roberts was a fail. They left us with big gaping holes when they left and no compensation to address them. We're not a club in dire financial needs, we're not a club looking to get through the season to survive - that's why we should never be contemplatning laons. They are fails for that reason. We're football fans, yes. We want the club to grow surely, not just to have one good season and then go backwards the next.

Look across all the League winners in Europe last season - tell me how many loanees they had?

Sporting had none
PSV had none
Union Saint Gilloise had none
Copenhagen had none
Etc etc

We had 2, we'll have at least 1 this season, we have at least 1 every season. Clubs who are competing for titles have been moving away for this for years, unless financial issues exist they want to develop their own players and reap the benefits, not develop players for other clubs.

Why are Celtic right to opt for loans and all these other clubs wrong? They are progressive clubs, we are an archaic one, they invest their resources in their club, we hoard ours. They thrive and progress in Europe and we fall behind. It's obvious why, our approach and lack of a coherent strategy is the reason we are falling behind.

 

I too do not like loans with no buy option..

But FF is a pish example because we go him on loan for two seasons, secured him on a permanent deal and punted him for £10m+

An example of a loan without a buy option that worked.. even though we couldn't convince him to stick around for the Covid season

 

I'm talking about his second loan spell, in case you have forgotten. The year 2019 is beside it. So it's not a pish example, you just didn't pay attention.

 

You are at it if you think other successful clubs never ever rely on loan deals. I prefer we don't do loan deals without an option, anyone would prefer that. That said, sometimes they work out well for the time we have them

You think rheyre failures cause they leave a hole in the squad with no financial reward for the club. Does that mean when a player leaves on a free is that also categorised as a failure?

Surely the goalkeeping failures we had after Forster left were more to do with bad future recruitment? The success of the player replacing the loanee has no bearing on whether that loan was a good one.

 

Loans are fine in isolation and should be judged on their individual merits.

A season is a long time and there’s nothing to say a player signed permanently will only be here for a year now.

I just hate that we often get them in on the last day of the window when it’s so obvious they’ve run of out of other ideas.

However, if it’s a player the manager thinks can improve the team for a season, I’m not against it.

 

Doesn't matter, Foster is an example of a loan working.. so, yes it's a pish example..

You've managed to spout a fair bit of pish, since you've joined or rejoined

 

Make money.

 

Same as me taking a leak at night - spray and pray.

 

Some unheard names written on the back of a * packet from some jakey scout.

 

Give me an example of clubs who rely on loan deals?

Your second point doesn't make sense, players are signed on long term deals generally, the only circumstances that deviate from this are veterans near the end of their career or perhaps a player who has had years of injury troubles and a club don't want to gamble on a long term deal. I've never heard of a team going out and buying a player for £10m and signing him on a 1 year deal.

The goalkeeping issue was a result of us putting a sticky plaster over it for a year and not sorting it out long before.

Relying on a loanee is a causation of the fact you have to go out and buy a player the next year to address a key issue next year. It's a sticky plaster and clubs generally don't use them unless there are financial difficulties or they are small clubs trying to survive in a league. Loans with options or obligations are different stories but this is clearly Celtic taking a player on loan to develop a player for another club.

I will guarantee you this. We won't be signing this guy on a permanent deal so if he's * it's been a complete waste of time and if he's in anyway decent we will have to go around replacing him next year when we can't even address positions we lost players in seasons ago. So please sell me the upside?

 

Loans should be for the January window. For example to cover for a player out injured for the season or something like that. They shouldn't be a big part of our summer recruitment unless they include an option to buy at the end.

 

Loan deals can absolutely be super effective , can get you a player you couldn't afford to buy (for a season at least) and there is potential to get a player of a far higher quality than you could afford to sign permanently. Cerny at the Huns is a prime example.

 

Loan deals are fine. Also gives us the option of getting rid easily if it doesn't work out.

 

We get linked with plenty really good players. Its the board that baulk at the asking price if anything above £2m. They then chose the cheap punt and think they've done us a favour.

 

I always felt the plan was throw enough * and some will stick ... We're barely even throwing * now

 

I really worry about the state of our recruitment going forward. We seem to be operating in the dark ages.

We need a proper head of recruitment & DoF if we are to be run like a proper modern club of our stature. Mark Lawell was chief scout, iirc, and im not even sure he was replaced. Do we have a proper dedicated analytics department? I feel like recently, with a few exceptions, we have been relying on agents and clubs offering players with the club cherry picking a few players. But if the asking price is too high we have no backup plan. Its a shambolic way for a club our size to be run.

Seems like we have too many business men and not enough football minded men where we need them to be, connecting the manager to the board.

 

Ange obviously had the Japanese knowledge but he also had a very well connected agent who he had a personal relationship with. I think those things combined contributed a lot to our success in recruitment under him. Compare that to now where we haven’t just failed to sign suitable players, we’ve struggled to even identify them!

I said in another thread last night that despite Ange walking out on us himself, I firmly believe that he was trying to implement a modern recruitment approach where players are identified, bought, sold for a profit and ready-made replacements are already lined up to be signed. Like what happened with JJ being moved on after a year, and replaced with a quality signing like AJ in advance of him even leaving.

That marries perfectly with his comments directly to the Celtic support that they shouldn’t get too attached to players. Realistically, we should have already sold CCV, Hatate and Maeda for healthy profits and brought in younger quality replacements. That’s how modern, competent clubs of our level operate.

Lesson #1: There are people out there who are really good at this stuff. Hire them and revamp everything.

Lesson #2: Having one or two people on the board doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to player procurement when it isn’t their strength, plus DD chiming in at probably inopportune times, isn’t a strategy for success. This has been shown time and time again.

Lesson #3: Don’t hire guys in important scouting or recruitment roles who have spent their careers in the lower leagues of England and coin names like ‘The Football Doctor’ to describe themselves. I could have told you that wouldn’t have gone well.

Lesson #4: Like in any type of business, you’re going to get better outcomes if you act professionally and are reasonable people to deal with. Conversely, you’re going to get a bad reputation if you * players and other clubs around. Plenty of examples here, but lowballing a team and then coming back with repeated offers just slightly higher each time is laughing stock territory. Sending players for medicals and then recalling them and then leaving them in lingo all because you’re completely disorganised and left scrambling around is really *.

Lesson #5: Sacrificing a scapegoat and saying things like ‘lessons have been learned’ time after time doesn’t cut it. It’s time for real, actual lessons to be learned - which of course we all know won’t have been.