The board

Believe it when I see it mate

 

No i o ow personally I beleive the players are worth what we paid don’t know why he’s not playing them if he wants the board to spend


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It's comfortable passivity. Since what's worked well so far hasn't broken, they won't change anything. It's not like the fans are putting any real pressure.

 

Source??

 

His gut feeling

 

Engels discussed in his first interview with the club that the first time he heard about our interest was in early July. I think the story broke to the news that we were interested about 3 weeks after that.

One of the journalists, I can't remember who it was, openly talked about the club overpaying on the original price because we left it late. I don't think it was McGowan but it might have been Friel from The Sun. Then, a couple of the podcasters started running with it.

 

The Celtic board are in a race against time as Brendan Rodgers awaits new recruits (Image: NQ Design)

After Celtic’s opening day win over St Mirren, Fergus McCann let the train take the strain. Resisting the comforts of a blacked-out Mercedes, the club’s former MD preferred to mingle with fans on the 5.19 to Glasgow Central.

‘The Bunnet’ hauled Celtic back from the abyss when the family dynasties who ran the club for a century ran out of money in 1994. Gratitude wore thin when he fell out with Tommy Burns and Wim Jansen, and he earned a reputation for being parsimonious and difficult to deal with.

David Murray did him a favour the day he sold Rangers to Craig Whyte. From that day on McCann was free to use his senior railcard on any train he liked. His legacy as the man who saved Celtic was secure.

Dermot Desmond doesn’t seem the type to join fans on platform one of Dalmarnock station for a post-match chin wag.

The Irish billionaire replaced McCann as controlling shareholder in 1999 and time will dictate how his legacy plays out.

Celtic have enjoyed more boardroom stability than Rangers over the last three decades and more trophies. Judging by the Ibrox side’s stuttering start to the league season there’s a few more to come and, some day in the future, Desmond might be given credit for overseeing a period of dominance Brendan Rodgersdescribes as a ‘golden era’.

In the here and now, people are more concerned with what the manager has to say about a transfer strategy doing him no favours

After a comfortable win over Aberdeen, Celtic’s directors might be asking themselves what all the fuss is about. All that pressure, all that grief over transfers comes as their biggest rivals spill points against Motherwell and Dundee.

Come August 31, the lead over Rangers could be 10 points if the Ibrox side pursue the option to cancel their game against St Mirren ahead of a Champions League play-off and lose the first Old Firm game of the season at Ibrox. Good luck persuading the Parkhead board to start chucking their money around then.

Rodgers wants to see more ambition than that. The last four windows have ended in some expression of mild public dissatisfaction from the manager and you can put the kettle on for five-in-a-row if the aspirations for this window span no further than taking part in the Champions League and being slightly better than Rangers.

Despite signing seven players, only two of Celtic’s new bhoys are first-team starters. And when Kieran Tierney and Benjamin Nygren combined for the first goal at Pittodrie it illustrated the point that, in football, you get what you pay for.

Five minutes into his second stint as manager Rodgers was asked for his thoughts on the window which delivered Nat Phillips, Paulo Bernardo, Luis Palma, Gustaf Lagerbielke, Maik Nawrocki, Kwon Hyeok-kyu, Yang Hyun-jun, Tomoki Iwata, Marco Tilio and Odin Thiago Holm.

“I think if you ask any manager they will always be wanting more,” he said diplomatically. Two years later, Yang and Bernardo are the only two left in the same postcode as the first team.

Nicolas Kühn was sold this summer but has not yet been replaced (Image: SNS Group)

The following window passed with just two new signings. Adam Idah arrived on loan from Norwich and Kühn signed in a permanent deal. Once again, supporters – like the man who signed them – felt short changed.

Rodgers offered the view that the club “could be a little braver in terms of bringing in another level of player,” adding “you bring in players for a minimal fee and then they make the club a lot of money.”

Persuading them to reinvest it is the hard part. Last summer, procrastination over signing players provoked some exasperation from the manager heading into the final days of the window.

“We shouldn’t have been getting into this last week in the position we’re in,” said Rodgers in the midst of a late scramble to sign Idah, Arne Engels and Auston Trusty for a total of £25m. “That’s the reality.”

Engels and Trusty arrived for over-inflated fees on August 30, taking a hammer and chisel to the boardroom view that the best deals are done in the final days of the window.

At the beginning of this year, Celtic sold top striker Kyogo Furuhashi and failed to replace him. Rodgers acknowledged that the window, “wasn’t ideal,” adding, “we have to, as a club, now go away and look at that like we do every window.”

The champions reported cash reserves of £65.4m last December and, two months into this current transfer window, have raked in around £25m from sales. As yet they have spent around £3m on new players and while they’ll bring in more in the final weeks, it’s far from clear that they’ll do it in time for the Champions League signing deadline.

The failure to get a couple of wingers in the door already is hard to fathom. They lost Jota to serious injury and sold Kühn to Como for £17m. And as soon as the football department identified Jakob Breum of Go Ahead Eagles as a player worth signing, it was up to the men in grey suits to get the deal done instead of sucking in their breath and kicking the tyres like time wasters on the forecourt of the local second-hand car showroom.

Fixated with securing ‘value for money’, offers of £1.5m, £1.75m plus add-ons then £3m went in for a player valued somewhere between £5m and £6m. As yet, Breum is no closer to moving to Glasgow and and he’s not the only player to be scouted, approved by the football department then vetoed by money men who don’t appear to trust their judgement.

The seventh anniversary of Terminado Day passed on Saturday. In August 2018 Rodgers sat, arms folded, in a breeze block changing room in the Lennoxtown training centre and began the Long Goodbye.

Failure to land John McGinn from Hibernian was less significant than what it said about the bigger picture. Asked what might happen if he felt the club were failing to move forward and progress Rodgers was emphatic. “My job is done then. Terminado. Gone.”

A niggardly reticence to get deals over the line nudged Rodgers towards the exit once before. It’s not difficult to see it happening again.

Asked if he planned to extend his contract beyond next summer, he said that he would only do so if the club continued to move forward and show some ambition. The clock is ticking.

Celtic will spend money between now and the end of the window, probably on four new players. As things stand, however, they’re giving the impression that they’re hardly bursting a gut to keep their manager. If that’s the case then fans can hardly blame Rodgers for bailing out again. He deserves better.

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When it's McGowan trashing the board you know things must be a *.

 

See being fair I think McGowan stopped getting info after he dared question Lawwell or the Board previously and as such now uses what he got from previous dealings to stick the boot in.

 

Wonder if anyone on here owns shares and goes to the AGM. Think ill buy some then try get a seat...curious.

 

Used to go until it became an obsession over slagging huns and pre screened questions and celtic da patter trying to be making jibes at huns

 

Aye that sounds like a pantomime