Kris Commons has delivered a brutal verdict on Celtic’s attempts to navigate through Champions League qualifiers while conducting transfer business.
Celtic only successfully navigated that route twice in their last eight attempts, in 2016 and 2017 when Brendan Rodgers was in charge as the hoops got through very nervy qualifiers against Hapoel Beer Sheva and Astana.
Playing vital European qualifiers before the opening of the domestic season isn’t ideal but with transfer business going on it becomes even more hazardous.
In 2015 Virgil van Dijk was sold to Southampton after Celtic lost to Malmo with Jozo Simunovic coming in as his replacement, a year earlier Fraser Forster made the same move after Celtic lost to Legia Warsaw with Craig Gordon facing Maribor when Celtic were reinstated.
In 2018 Moussa Dembele was sold soon after losing to AEK Athens with Neil Lennon’s side falling to Cluj and Ferencvaros as frantic business was going on.
It has been a familiar script for Celtic fans but with Champions League group stage football secured that element should be removed from this summer’s transfer widow.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst faces that drama this summer to pick up the £30m Champions League windfall, discussing that issue in his Daily Mail column, the Daily Record reports Commons saying:
Rangers can’t afford to sit and twiddle their thumbs. When it comes to the Champions League qualifiers, they only need to look at what Celtic did over a number of years.
Almost every season without fail, you had all this uncertainty around key players in terms of hanging around to wait and see if the club managed to reach the group stage.
Celtic became notoriously slow with getting their transfer business done every summer. It became a running circus year after year that they would go into the European qualifiers with a half-baked squad.
They would then go and make some panic buys late in the window Shane Duffy, Diego Laxalt, Albian Ajeti to try and save face.
This is where the likes of sporting director Ross Wilson has to earn his money for Rangers. As soon as the final whistle was blown at Hampden on Saturday, he had to turn his focus on to the inevitable rebuild
At the start of the 21/2 season Odsonne Edouard and Ryan Christie played for Celtic in the Europa League qualifier away to Alkmaar and the Glasgow Derby, by the time Celtic played Ross County on September 11 they had been sold to Crystal Palace and Bournemouth with Jota and Cameron Carter-Vickers making their debuts in the 3-0 win over Malky Mackay’s side.
We never had a settled team for the qualifiers, usually central defence we ended up playing Nir Bitton or some other player not accustomed to the position there. Lawwell, bankier and Co cost us millions!
However, the reason for delaying buying players is that there is no guarantee that they will influence things enough to secure qualification. That means you have a very expensive player on big wages and no way to pay for him. Rangers will have to wait or gamble. They gambled in 2011 and went into administration. That could happen again. Remember they are not a going concern and have lost money since their inception in 2012. That cannot go on forever.
Editor: The ‘trick’ is to do good business in January. Signing new players in June and July and going straight into Champions League qualifiers is high risk, as we know.
That is very true John also all these old players of theirs saying they should go for this player or that player where is the money coming from.