What’s our scouting and recruitment plan?

We're merely customers to them. To us, it's ingrained in decades of history, passed through generations of family etc...

Football is like that all over now. Clubs and games pawns for the rich.

 

This is 100% it. We just got away with it. Not even rumours. If these EPL teams are fighting over these types of roles, why do we seem to act like we don't need it? Ridiculous.

 

Aye, I’m trying to think of the plenty of guys we’ve let slip. Outwith the ones I’ve mentioned.

John McGinn as well, that we all know and have zero excuse about. Who else? More recently than McGinn?

 

We need a system in place, I don’t like anyone having more power than the manager when it comes to bringing in players though. I loved the John Park system, working in tandem, and us trusting the system in place. That was Lenny’s first stint, Ronny didn’t trust it, Congerton obliterated it. It’s been a near decade of scrambling since, and club contacts and * luck in some cases (Frimpong specifically)


The problem with that wasn’t the scouting or database or the way we identified guys, it was that we wouldn’t sanction more than £2.5m for any player at all. Van Dijk an extra £100k, we wouldn’t have got him.

That system with proper backing, then we have a winner. That system was what got Dembele in as well btw, but it happened when BR came in, and we didn’t have a a set wage cap. And Dembele got a huge appearance fee, and a regular wage. So if he proved himself, like he did, he was on near £45k a week, if he never scored baha

 

Taking the same approach to a DoF as we do a CDM

 

Think Park gets a lot more credit than he deserves. He's been a failure everywhere else he went.

His time coincided with David Moss being a scout and he appears to have been very good.

 

Why does someone need to have more power than the manager, though? Even Pep Guardiola is helped with the recruitment by proper scouts and a recruitment team. Ultimately, Rodgers should always have the final say but when is he going to be consistently watching games in certain markets where we can exploit?

There is only so much we can pick up from the EPL/Championship. The whole footballing side of the club needs a sporting director. An overseer who is responsible for the footballing operations and the success on the pitch. That’s who should be in contact with scouts and a director of football. Not Michael Nicholson/Peter Lawwall.

 

He was a massive success at us and Hibs. I always think he gets a harder time than is necessary, due to Lawwell’s scatter gun penny pinching approach. Park did provide guys to scatter gun on, but that’s the nature of that game. Sometimes it’s Wanyama, sometimes it’s Van Dijk. Sometimes it’s Boerrigter and Teemu Pukki.

 

That’s my point mate, the ‘modern’ system is a DoF and a head coach. I don’t like the manager reporting to somebody and able to be overruled about the squad or the team. Their should be a system to work in tandem, and we should constantly have the next manager in mind that suits the system in place who’ll work with the background and ethos of what we’re working towards.

 

I don’t think it can be argued that we need a structure because as it stands, there really isn’t one.

for a board focused on money in over money out, surely they can see the value in implementing a solid network, strategy and framework to our recruitment. Finding the rough diamond for a low investment, giving them the platform to develop and perform and then selling on is apparently the model but that structure supports that.

I’m hopeful about this window but not confident. We should be positioning ourselves as a solid option for young, talented players looking to move to a big 5 team. That’s just being realistic.

But all of that needs a solid blueprint, and we just don’t have it just now. My big hope for this window is a couple of starters that raise our level, some young talent, but more importantly…the implementation of a recruitment structure and personnel to make it a success.

 

Aw needing a structure is an undebatable fact. The nuances of what we want the structure to be is the only thing. DoF is one we’ve seen fans say for years, and there’s a succession of major clubs that have that framework. I don’t like it though, I like the manager having a team behind him, rather than a man above him on football matters.

But I do think we need someone in a role that shapes the ethos in the background, that the manager goes to for support but can’t overrule the manager. And any manager we get in needs to fit into the ethos we want, and is willing to work with that structure.


And it needs to be a continuous structure. Every manager we’ve had, we’ve done it differently and ripped it up started again. And post-Congerton, it was a rip up, and we’ve not really started again.

 

agree with this. The manager is the one in charge of the team, so final say should be with him with a team supporting him. Theres the framework of the club model though, on how we should recruit/play, so the manager becomes more of a coach. Just be really keen to see a summer where we sit back and say “fair enough, you’re matching the supporters ambition” and see us try and push forward instead of getting by on the bare minimum to win the league. Despite everything, I think we were lucky this year, and we need higher aspirations.

 

And we should constantly have a list of 3/4 managers we keep an eye on that would fit in with the structure in place if the current manager suddenly leaves. Basically we need to not be a reactionary club but pro-active. We’re meticulous in a lot of aspects, mostly financial. And we do have an impressive ability to swivel on every ‘five year plan’ we apparently always have, at the drop of a hat, we are very, very short term thinkers. And that has actually brought a lot of long term success. We need long term thinking, but still adaptable. Most importantly regardless of structure in place, we need to stop * hoarding money and back the man in charge.


Ange made that happen, and we pretended like we’d always have him here, that was obvious from 6 months in he was more valuable than any asset he brought in like Kyogo, CCV or Jota. And we wouldn’t always have him. But we done * all, and brought in Mark Lawwell, who Ange had worked with, Peter’s boy. And it was * useless, because we had more managers of scouts, than guys out there as scouts.

 

proactive not reactive is the simple phrase I was looking for! Agree with what you’re saying mate.

 

It sums up a lot of frustrations for me, even back when we would play qualifiers with a youth player and Bitton, a midfielder, a weak but tall one at that, for qualifiers to get access to money we can’t dream of in Scotland.

And we always knew that would happen, not even in summer, the January window. We would wait and see if we could get there, and frantically try to buy guys. And that was annoyingly us proactively deciding to be reactive.

Honestly, 5 trophies, a double first season against Huns that got to a euro final after starting with 13 first team players - one being James McCarthy, Treble second season, some of the best football I’ve seen. The most incredible thing Ange got out of us was signing his 3 main targets 30th December when we got Maeda, Hatate and Ideguchi. Like… * me, that’s far rarer.

 

I've been banging this drum for years, but I'm not actually expecting anything to change at this stage. If they haven't started forward planning by this point it's not likely to happen any time soon.

 

Is the recruitment process behind the scenes up to speed?

I think we need to improve that – but the department and the people that are here are absolutely fantastic. The work they've put in over the course of the summer and going back over the months and being so diligent covered many games travelled out to games, they've done so much work on that front.

But it's still an area I think that we can review the window and see where, like every area, where we can improve it. And I said it, I think it was last week, that recruitment is key, alongside your playing, management and coaching staff. Because as I said, if you don't get that right, there can be very costly mistakes. So for us, it's a constant look at it where we can develop and improve it. But the guys that have been here, they've worked ever so hard going through the various options and availability of players to try and help us.

 

Brendan Rodgers has lifted the lid on the current recruitment process at Celtic, delving into how the club identify, and eventually look to sign, new players

Speaking at a press conference at Lennoxtown this afternoon, Rodgers went into intriguing detail. CeltsAreHere asked the boss about recruitment.

“We’ve got a recruitment team who I can tell you have worked tirelessly over the numbers of months”, he said.

Once those guys then go through that list of players that fit in with the profile and how we want to work, that will then come to me to ratify that player that we would want, and that will go forward to the board to do the deal.”

Since recruitment head Mark Lawell and lead scout Joe Dudgeon departed Celtic earlier this year, fans haven’t had any coherence over how the club go about signing players


Whether the current process is effective or not, though, remains to be seen. Indeed, Rodgers hinted at an overhaul of the recruitment team post-summer window.

He said: “It’s something for sure come the end of the window we have to have a look at that whole structure and set-up.”

 

And there lays the problem the board of dinosaurs looking for value.