Brendan Rodgers needs to sign new talent capable of taking big games by the scruff of the neck consistently while delivering strong value for money as he endeavours to bolster the squad that fell so desperately short of the line in chasing a treble at Hampden.
The only fly in the ointment, of course, is that Rodgers doesn’t seem terribly strong on signing new talent capable of taking big games by the scruff of the neck consistently. Or getting proper value for money either, for that matter.
The Scottish Cup final loss to Aberdeen was a case in point. Further ammunition for those unsure whether the recruitment set-up at Parkhead — or the overall strategy being applied — is really best-placed to take this grand old team to the next level of the modern game.
We have asked the question within the pages of Mail Sport already this season — back in March, to be precise — and it seems apposite in the post mortem of what was a quite spectacular failure at Hampden to ask it again.
Can manager Rodgers be trusted to spend tens of millions more in the market after the season just gone? Has he done enough to win the unrestrained confidence of the board in his talent-spotting activities?
That the squad lacks the depth required to go long in Europe again and maintain a challenge for all the domestic baubles is clear. Just look at the guys who came off the bench at the weekend to try and find a way through a supremely well-organised Aberdeen side that had set out its stall from the off and invited Celtic to try to break them down.
Rodgers’ work in the transfer market should be under scrutiny after Celtic’s Hampden defeat
Nicolas Kuhn and Paulo Bernardo are among the signings who have not done enough lately
Keeper Kasper Schmeichel failed to get close to any of Aberdeen’s penalties in the shootout
Yang Hyun-jun, Jeffrey Schlupp, Luke McCowan, Johnny Kenny and James Forrest, who, club icon as he may well be, is about to turn 34 years of age and is really just a bit-part player nowadays.
Rodgers, of course, spent the guts of £40million on transfer fees alone this season. Bags of cash were also invested in the likes of Gustaf Lagerbielke, Maik Nawrocki, Luis Palma, Odin Holm and Kwon Hyeok-kyu in his first summer back, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt on those.
Back then, still trying to win over the angry mob who had his picture up on the dartboard for moving to Leicester City in 2019, he sat through press conferences mumbling through gritted teeth about being happy to coach any old odd and sod the club wanted to sign.
Things are different now. He’s the daddy again. Former recruitment chief Mark Lawwell is long off the plot, replaced by the since unheard-of Paul Tisdale, who arrived in October only after Rodgers had expressed positive views on their ‘compatibility’.
The players coming through the in-door, you have to believe, are now bona-fide Rodgers signings. They are players he can be judged upon. Players he believes are capable of turning big games at crucial moments.
The obvious thing to ask, then, is where most of them were when the cup final went into the trenches during extra-time and the penalty shoot-out?
Auston Trusty, a £5.5m arrival from Sheffield United, spent the entire afternoon on the bench having lost his place at the back to Liam Scales. Arne Engels and Adam Idah are guys you could have realistically expected to take a penalty in the shoot-out. As it happened, neither of them made it past 65 minutes — hooked for Yang and McCowan, respectively.
Engels isn’t a bad player. Far from it. He’s only 21. Celtic do have a good chance of turning a profit on him in time. If Atalanta pony up enough cash this summer, he might well be on his way immediately.
However, the fact of the matter right now is that he cost £11m, a club record, and he simply isn’t influencing games in the way you would expect, given his price tag. He did hit the post shortly before being taken off with Celtic 1-0 up, but he didn’t have a good game by any stretch of the imagination.
Idah was arguably even worse. In one of several strange decisions from Rodgers, he was put through the middle, with Daizen Maeda, player of the season and a revelation at centre-forward, shunted back out wide.
Idah has scored a perfectly respectable 21 goals this season. But Cyriel Dessers has scored 29 across the city of Glasgow at Rangers and no one is putting him up for the Ballon d’Or. A sizeable rump of punters at Ibrox would have him out the door to the highest bidder this summer.
Idah had the chance to become the first-pick No 9 when Kyogo Furuhashi was sold to Rennes in January and blew it. An established winger in Maeda proved a better bet. That’s a problem when you have cost £8.5m with add-ons, a deal in which Celtic ended up paying over the odds because they hadn’t put an option to buy in his initial loan deal from Norwich City.
Paulo Bernardo would possibly have taken one of those decisive penalties too. Rodgers agreed to buy him for £3.5m last summer after an initial loan deal from Benfica. He made way for Schlupp early in extra-time and can’t really be considered as part of Celtic’s strongest team.
Engels, Idah, Trusty and Bernardo represent almost £30m of fees alone. Nicolas Kuhn did come in a year past in January for £3m. He’s a Rodgers man too. He will almost certainly make the club a profit, but he didn’t make it past 65 minutes in the final either and has suffered a real drop in form in the wake of an explosive start to the campaign.
Add Jota to the mix, brought back from Rennes for £8m. He’s currently out with a knee ligament injury, but doesn’t look like the same guy as the one who left for Saudi Arabia for £25m in the summer of 2023.
Whichever way you add it all up, Rodgers has spent and spent big. There will always be grumblings about the board at Parkhead and talk of biscuit tins, but no one can say they haven’t backed him.
Yet, who are the main men in that squad? Callum McGregor, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Alistair Johnston and Maeda. All of whom pre-date Rodgers. Is this a team really moving forward in the face of what is a whopping investment in talent by Scottish standards?
It is certainly a squad that needs new players capable of taking on the mantle of being leaders, gamechangers.
It is also important to point out that Celtic did well in Europe this season, a key ambition. They gave Bayern Munich one hell of a fright in competing for a place in the last 16 of the Champions League and that has given Rodgers strong reason to ask for significant investment to try and go further.
However, that night in Munich seems a long time ago. In the second part of the season, Celtic have put in some really, really poor performances.
They surrendered at Ibrox at New Year, taking a three-goal pounding. They lost, deservedly, at Hibs and St Johnstone. They failed to turn up for the first half of Rangers’ visit to Parkhead and lost 3-2. They only scraped a draw at Dundee with a last-gasp penalty.
And in the final against Aberdeen, in a game built up as a date with destiny, they were slow, unimaginative and rotten. Rodgers admitted as much in his magnanimous post-match appraisal. Their big signings flopped. Kasper Schmeichel, now 38, had a nightmare in goal, diverting in an innocuous Shayden Morris cross for Aberdeen’s equaliser and failing to get close to any of their penalties in the shoot-out.
All those experts in Denmark who landed in the soup not so long ago for calling him finished must have been having a field day. Lord knows what the bloke who likened him to a child with polio must be calling him now. Viljami Sinisalo, who was doing OK in goal, must have his own thoughts too.
Look, there are plenty of questions to be asked about a number of the manager’s big calls against Aberdeen. They feel irrelevant now, though.
The real issues revolve around just how much money needs to be spent to push things forward with a squad that blew its shot at history — and whether Rodgers can be depended upon to spend it effectively without anyone else appearing to apply much in the way of checks and balances.
