With the January transfer window a week old a fascinating insight into Celtic’s Recruitment process has been provided by the Celtic State of Mind Podcast.
The daily show is gaining an increasing following with over 7,000 views on You Tube alone within 24 hours of most episodes.
Recruitment has become something of a nightmare for Celtic in recent seasons. Over the last two January’s Patryk Klimala, Ismaila Soro, Marian Shved, Manny Perez, Andrew Gutman and Vakoun Bayo have been signed with only Soro making any impact on the Celtic team.
Loan deals for Oli Burke, Timo Weah and Jeremy Toljan are best forgotten about.
The summer window of 2018 is likely to be a significant one when Celtic fans review the decade, after securing Odsonne Edouard on a permanent deal from Paris St Germain it all seemed to go downhill with Moussa Dembele, Stuart Armstrong and Erik Sviatchenko moved on without any genuine attempts at bringing in similar quality replacements.
Dedryck Boyata’s saga dragged on through the final two months of the Transfer Window with Emilio Izaguirre and Youssouf Mulumbu signed up alongside a loan deal for Filip Benkovic.
Overshadowing it all was the John McGinn saga as Hibs held out for £3m while Celtic pocketed £8m for Armstrong, eventually Aston Villa agreed terms with the midfielders’ success in England becoming increasingly embarrassing to the club his grand-father was chairman of in the eighties and nineties.
8 minutes in, Paul John Dykes explains
He was identified by Brendan Rodgers as a player he wanted to bring in to Celtic. I think part of that process was succession planning for Scott Brown. Not comparing the two players I think that John McGinn could have been a Celtic midfielder for years and years to come on.
He has gone on to be a huge success down at a very high level in England but there was another issue, not just with John McGinn signing, there was another issue, probably many others that I’m unaware of.
Celtic, under Brendan Rodgers wanted Cristiano Piccini, who was a highly rated player at that time and who probably within Celtic’s budget at that time. So there has been two issues that I’m aware of in terms of signing players.
So, the first one, John McGinn there has been so much said about McGinn and the fiasco that ensued when we tried to sign him, he was obviously one of the players that Brendan Rodgers wanted. It wasn’t solely due to the fact that we failed to get that deal across the line that made Rodgers wish to leave Celtic, it was one of the reasons.
On the day that John McGinn signed for Aston Villa, he is down in Birmingham, he contacted as many people as he possibly could with access to Peter Lawwell and also the company (Celtic) lawyer at that time to say that he wanted to sign for Celtic and they wanted them to give him a call back. And he still hasn’t had that call back.
So there was an opportunity for Celtic, still to sign John McGinn at the last minutes when he was down in Birmingham and he was preparing to sign for Aston Villa. So you can understand, under the circumstances for whatever reason Peter Lawwell didn’t want to complete that deal how frustrating that would be for the manager, how frustrating it was for Brendan Rodgers at that time. It certainly contributed to his eventual departure from the club.
The other one, and the reason that I bring this up is because Colin Watt on yesterday’s show spoke about a situation whereby we were in discussions with a player, flew him over to Glasgow. Brendan Rodgers was very keen, it was a player he himself had identified during one of these (Recruitment) meetings to come to Celtic.
It interfered with Brendan Rodgers’ personal family holiday and this is the example that Colin brought up yesterday. The player in question was Cristiano Piccini and the deal that he believed he was coming to talk about, and he was very close to signing, was changed.
So, he has flown over to Glasgow, Brendan Rodgers was very keen to sign him, so he puts his family holiday on hold and Peter Lawwell changes the deal. He changes the deal to such a degree that Piccini jumps on a plane and goes back to where he’d came from.
So, these are two examples of a manager identifying players and the deal not being done. There are the things that we need to be aware of in the January transfer window, the way that Celtic operates.
It is believed that the Piccini deal was heavily dependent on the bulk of the fee being paid up front to Sporting Lisbon with Lawwell looking to pay in stages. The defender joined Valencia for £7m in July 2018.
A couple of weeks after failing to sign McGinn Celtic snapped up Mulumbu as a free agent after being impressed by his form for Kilmarnock. Izaguirre, Benkovic and Mulumbu started a total of 31 mates in the 2018/19 season before departing Celtic.
CLICK HERE for Piccini Transfermarkt profile
