Dom McKay has two days to step out of the shadow of Peter Lawwell by delivering a squad of players suitable for Ange Postecoglou and the biggest Season Ticket holder base in Scotland.
The new manager has delivered by providing the board with a place in the Europa League and the chance to cash in with £75 packages direct to the Celtic Family that paid top dollar for last season’s shabby stream.
On the pitch Postecoglou has put out a team that is pleasing on the eye, scoring plenty of goals but painfully thin with a first team squad of 15 or 16 padded out by a dozen or more not trusted to make any contribution.
The Australian knows what he wants, during the pre-season training camp in Wales he revealed that there were three transfer targets for every position. Acquiring those players has been slow progress.
For the Champions League campaign McKay delivered Liel Abada- a teenager from Israel that doesn’t speak English. Abada did answer the call with a goal against Midtjylland but predictable failings saw Celtic crash out of the UEFA windfall.
Following the defeat in Denmark Carl Starfelt and Kyogo Furuhashi made their debuts at Tynecastle, a classic Lawwell tactic of strengthening the squad after being knocked out of the Champions League. Starfelt’s signing was announced within an hour of selling Kris Ajer.
Against Midtjylland Celtic’s central defence consisted of Dane Murray making his first competitive start alongside Stephen Welsh, a ‘veteran’ with 20 first team starts going into the match in Denmark.
At Ibrox yesterday Postecoglou had no natural left-sided players.
Croatian international right-back Josip Juranovic made his debut in the other full-back position, ahead of him it was Furuhashi’s turn to play out of position, in recent games James Forrest and Ryan Christie had played on the left wing.
An injury or red card to Welsh or Starfelt and it was Nir Bitton coming on to hold up the defence.
It does seem that the board have recognised this issue by attempting to sign Jota on loan from Benfica for the season, yesterday Celtic lost the second of four SPFL matches.
Apart from last year the summer transfer window was Lawwell’s big opportunity to make a profit in the market. A top asset like Kieran Tierney or Moussa Dembele would be sold with low price replacements such as Boli Bolingoli, Greg Taylor, Vakoun Bayo or Patryk Klimala brought in. Only Taylor has made any worthwhile contribution.
Coming out the transfer window stronger than we entered it was another favoured Lawwell tactic, neatly overlooking the fact the Celtic usually went in with Champions League qualifiers to play and emerged in September in the Europa League.
The sale of Ajer has more than covered the transfer business completed so far, if McKay is serious about the job and showing some ambition quality players will be signed for the holes in Postecoglou’s squad.
Just like Champions League qualifiers the transfer window dates are known long in advance, they don’t come along too early or by surprise.
If the transfer window is viewed as the opportunity to generate fresh funds for a rainy day it will be a classic false economy worthy of McKay’s predecessor. More than fifty thousand eyes are on the Celtic CEO over the next two days.