Celtic Transfers 2024

Chris sutton article


The prospect of losing Matt O’Riley this summer is a tough one for Celtic fans to stomach. But allowing Kyogo to also head out the door would be absolutely unthinkable right now.

Celtic shouldn’t even contemplate the possibility of the striker leaving. They can’t entertain it – at any price. There’s been enough said about O’Riley and people have just about got their heads around his likely departure. Kyogo is a different matter. The story this week about Manchester City being interested has got supporters in a panic – and it’s understandable. The notion of Celtic losing two of their best players going into the final week of the transfer window makes my stomach lurch as well.

A few of my colleagues in England have scoffed a little about the City link with Kyogo. But I can understand why they’d be looking at him. I have no doubt Kyogo could cut it in the Premier League. You look at his movement, his speed, his ability to get across his man and attack the near post. He would score goals for City, for sure.


And I’m sure plenty will understand the attraction for Celtic if they can get £20million plus for a 29-year-old striker. That’s not the point though. Celtic might get a ton of money – but Kyogo is irreplaceable



Let’s face it, they are not going to go out and replace him with another £20m frontman. It will be a player who has potential and will need to develop. That’s the reality at Celtic and I get the model of buying cheap and then selling big.

But at some point they are going to need to draw a line in the sand. They need to show they are a club with Champions League ambitions rather than just a battery farm for other clubs to come along and pick up their top players whenever they feel like it.


Everyone gets worked up about City but I’m not sure that would be the right career move for Kyogo either. Yes, he’d make plenty of money, but he’d be the back-up for Erling Haarland


Would he be happy sitting on the bench every week and playing the odd Carabao Cup tie? It wouldn’t be for me. He’d be as well taking the Saudi money as far as I am concerned.

Likewise for O’Riley. It’s been assumed his move to Brighton is inevitable but is it the best place for him? I’m not so sure about that one either. Brighton are a good club, who play nice football and have an imaginative manager.

But the Amex Stadium is not Celtic Park on Champions League nights. Of course it’s the league more than anything and there’s the attraction of playing against the big clubs most weeks.

What about the attraction of winning trophies? O’Riley has the ability to go to the very top and you suspect Brighton won’t be his last port of call. I don’t think he needs a stepping stone move though. It’s not completely out of the question for a player to go directly to a top-six club.

The likes of Virgil van Dijk worked their way to a Premier League winning side after an initial move down south. But Kieran Tierney went straight from Parkhead to Arsenal and I can’t see why O’Riley can’t trod a similar path after another year of performing in the Champions League.


That is where it really matters and the prospect of going into the competition without Kyogo and O’Riley is a nightmare. I know Brendan Rodgers has talked up some of the performances in Europe last season, but I wasn’t all that convinced.

But any of the decent stuff they did produce, it was O’Riley and Kyogo at the heart of it. Celtic don’t have many Champions League level players – but these two are.

And if they are both allowed to leave at this stage, they might as well roll up the white flag. If one or both go it would also leave Rodgers with a huge amount of work required and not a lot of time to do it


Going back to January he stated he was three or four quality players short of what he wanted and all they have done so far is replace Joe Hart with Kasper Schmeichel and bring back two players who were at the club last season on loan and not always guaranteed starters anyway.


To lose another two vital men would leave Celtic scrambling for five players – who would need to hit the ground running. In case people have forgotten, Rangers are up next weekend and the first derby is always huge psychologically. Can you imagine the reaction if Celtic sell O’Riley and Kyogo, bring in a couple of prospects for a debut against their big rivals and then they lose the game?

The fans would understandably be furious. This summer should have been about the Champions League but unless they pull something special out the bag, they are now jeopardising the league.

That’s an incredible situation to be in when there was a feeling that if they went out and brought in a few quality additions early in the window then they could absolutely bury Rangers. Instead, there’s a week to go in the window and they are somehow facing the prospect of being weaker than at the end of last season. Celtic need to get it sorted sharpish – while slapping a not for sale sign on Kyogo for starters

 

On the back of Matt's sale, every club now knows 2 things. We are desperate to bring players in and that we have money to spare. Anyone we go for will have their feet raised. And there is nothing we can do so close to the window closing. Of course the board wont pay. Talk of paying £9/10 m for players is pie in the sky. We have already splashed out on Idah and Bernardo. At best a couple of young projects or loans at low ball figures. The board and those salting the policy will all pat themselves on the back

 

Yes, we have to seriously upgrade the scouting / recruitment teams, but to say those at the Club can't take us forward is horse manure. On the park we need to also upgrade the quality of players to help improve in Europe but the Club has moved forward from previously (Kelly's / Whites). It started with McCann coming in and turfing out the arseholes who had held the Club back for years and we were just about bust, whereas the Club financially is in a good place now, but there needs to be a loosening of the purse strings to up the teams quality for Europe.

Don't come back with the standard 'board bootlicker', 'PL puppet', etc., and how supporters like us are what holds the Club back. What's held the Club back the most is the monopoly that happened to European Competition with UEFA allowing the TV companies money to make some Leagues bigger and others to fall behind, with Scotland being one of them. Without recognising how Europe nowadays is set up as a closed shop to the TV companies who dictate the money via viewer numbers being who gets the most then you can shout until the cows come home as that's a massive huddle for us, and other Clubs in the poorer leagues.

'67 we won in Lisbon, Rankers lost to Bayern Munich in the Cup Winners Cup final and Kilmarnock lost in the Fairs Cup semi-final to Leeds Utd. Even up to the late 80's Scottish teams were still competing in Europe (Aberdeen and Dundee Utd) but as soon as Sky came in with TV money those days were resigned to history and will never be seen again

 

But it could well be down to a combination of failings from the board:

• prioritising financial performance over on the park improvements (looks like we're going to hit £100 mil in the bank soon)
  
• Failure to modernise the footballing operation at the club by bringing in a Director of Football (our board has 8 members: all of them business people, none of them football people)
  
• Failure to develop a quality recruitment set up (you surely can't argue that it was a coincidence that the best candidate for head of recruitment was the chairman of the boards son)

We need a DoF in the boardroom to help modernise the football operations, be a board level ally for the manager and push the business types to invest more in on the field performance. The two most powerful people at the club have been on the board for over 20 years each (Desmond almost 30). We are clearly stagnating, and it feels like they are holding us back. Dominic McKay seemed like someone that wanted to modernise and that was delivering the kind of signings the manager wanted, and he was pushed out of the club after a few months.

 

20 years of European failure would suggest otherwise. We are ran like a * bowling club.

 

If we were signing 5 £50k per week players instead of 5 £25k per week player, it would only add £6.5mil to the wage bill. We seem to be approaching £100 mil in the bank. We can afford it.

 

Just watched BR presser there. And what is clear, is that he has told the board what he wants and that he won't accept anything less. I'm slightly more optimistic after watching his presser that we'll strengthen. But still, we've been here before.

 

Not necessarily. You have a percentage of your annual revenue for salaries, agents fees and transfer fees. That money in the bank can fund all capital costs or maintenance.

 

We signed anyone else yet or we still tin pot as *?

Absolute minimum we need is 4 quality straight into starting 11 signings. We probably need 5 or 6 fora stronger squad but that's not happening.

Worrying thing through all of this is there are people out there who are still happy with the squad even with MOR leaving.

 

we have thrown away * knows how many million on duds over the past 20 years and lost out on * knows how many millions missing out on champions league because of it .the fact we have to constantly sell our best players is clear the fannys on the board aint the financial whizz kids they seem to think they are, how they have managed to convince so many is head scratcher

 

We are clearly going to spend money , BR said we hadn't spent much before MOR sale ,you don't genuinely think we are going to replace him with a loan ? Bogusz is looking more than likely and will cost the guts of 10m . Beck will be 3 or 4 then a couple more , anyone that genuinely believes we wont spend decent money next week is pessimistic to an EXTREME .

 

Who's happy with the squad after MOR left ?? This thread is becoming fully mental .

 

We’ve taken in about £50m in transfer fees since January

O’Riley £30m
Abada £10m
Oh £3m
Lawal £3m
Turnbull £2m
Haskabanovic £2m
Kelly £400k

Bearing in mind we already had about £70/80m in the bank plus we’ve got the champions league revenue coming too.

We’ve spent £14m in return and that is just to secure players who were already here last season and a sub GK.

There is now 6 days of the window to go and we’ve just sold our best player.

We now need a

LCB
LB
CM x2
Winger

This has DISASTER written all over it.

SACK THE BOARD.

 

James McAtee from city just creeped up.

 

Can you point us to these people that are happy to leave the squad as is? Everybody knows we need to upgrade on Taylor/Scales if we want to make an impact in the champions league, and everybody knows we need to replace O'Riley.

 

We can't always wait on the sale of a MOR. Especially when we have a truck load of cash already.

 

Nope he's invented them so he can be extra outraged .

 

Clearly. So why has the club waited till the very last minute to bring players that we needed in January in? No money?

Theres optimism and there's delusion.