Ange Postecoglou has revealed that his Celtic squad turnover was delayed until the club had secured the sales of Kris Ajer, Odsonne Edouard and Ryan Christie.
The new boss took charge of Celtic in June 2021 without the loan signings that had ‘boosted’ last season’s squad, Scott Brown departed, Leigh Griffiths out of contract and summer 2020 signings Albian Ajeti and Vasilis Barkas looking like damaged goods.
A massive transformation was required with three key players in the final 12 months of their contracts, in Christie’s case his Celtic deal ended in January 2022.
Liam Shaw and Osaze Urhoghide were the only new signings with Postecoglou for pre-season training in Wales, within a week of signing Liel Abada made a scoring debut against Midtjylland but it was hardly a mass turnover of players.
Between the two ties against Midtjylland Ajer was sold to Brentford with Carl Starfelt signing on the same day.
Joe Hart and James McCarthy were signed after the SPFL opened with a defeat away to Hearts, on August 28 Josip Juranovic was signed before the real flush of transfer activity.
Discussing the players he inherited that had their eyes set on moving on, Postecoglou told The Sun:
To the players’ credit I said to them, ‘let’s be up front and honest about this, I’m not going to take it personally because I’ve arrived and people want to leave’.
These decisions were probably made a lot earlier and with all these guys — whether it was Kristoffer, Odsonne or Ryan — it was pretty clear they weren’t going to be part of the plans for this season.
But I said to them that while they were with us I was going to use them as if they were part of the plans and when the time came to go we would deal with it there.
I was well aware those three wouldn’t be around for this season and the tricky part was I knew we wouldn’t get in replacements before they’d gone.
Most of our recruiting came after that or just before those guys left, so that was going to be the tricky bit. If it had already been done, dealing with it would’ve been easier. It was a juggling act.
At Ibrox on August 29 Christie and Edouard played their last matches before being sold, Giorgos Giakoumakis was signed with Jota arriving on loan from Benfica.
With three central defenders, including Nir Bitton, Celtic moved to bring in Cameron Carter-Vickers on loan with the deal announced in the closing stages of the transfer window,
Postecoglou has delivered on his KPIs and more, he excelled in the January transfer window with three more ready made first team players with Yosuke Ideguchi’s progress hampered by the crunching boot of an Alloa player.
The summer transfer window will soon be opening, based on his track record Postecoglou deserves to be backed to the hilt having delivered on value and got the Celtic support fully engaged with an exciting new-look side.
Between £25-30m was raised from the transfers of Ajer, Edouard and Christie. Less than a fortnight after the transfer window closed Dom McKay’s brief spell as CEO was ended.
Yes good players come and go but not to many have had there managers say in press that they aren’t pulling there weight you want a transfer alright but you have to play to for the club and supporters that have supporters you for years not down tools supporters remember that relationship with the club