Report claims that Celtic have a £20m transfer ceiling

Kieran Devlin has claimed that Celtic have a £20m spending limit in place. 

If that is the case Ange Postecoglou has around £2.5m left to spend after splashing out on converting three loans deals to permanent moves alongside adding Ben Siegrist and Alexandro and Ben Siegrist. 

The £20m spending cap seems highly speculative and based around last season’s spend despite the club now being in very different circumstances. A year ago there was no guarantee of playing in front of fans, a year ago just 2,000 were allowed to watch a friendly against Preston with a full house expected today. 

Despite the focus on transfer fees wages are the biggest cost at Celtic. Last August Joe Hart and James McCarthy were signed for a combined fee of just £1m but are probably among the highest earners at the club. 

Wages and X thousand pounds per week stories are always highly speculative. With Champions League football guaranteed and on offer again to the winners of this season’s SPFL Premiership there are very sound reasons for further investment in the six weeks left of the Transfer Window. 

Last season’s expenditure could be recouped anytime at all- if Liel Abada and Josip Juranovic were sold this summer the fees would probably pay for all of last years transfer fees with useful change leftover.

Celtic’s current transfer stance is explained in The Athletic: 

They are reluctant to spend more than £20 million ($23.7m) this summer, which was also their rough limit last year. It was why, after spending £4.5 million on Carl Starfelt, £3.6 million on Liel Abada, £1 million on Hart and £5 million on Kyogo Furuhashi, their initial target for right-back was taking Manchester City’s Yan Couto on loan before he moved to Girona — prompting £2.7 million to be spent on Josip Juranovic. 

Both Carter-Vickers and Filipe Jota were excellent on loan last season and joining Celtic permanently was celebrated. But their transfers — £6 million and £6.3 million respectively — equate to almost two-thirds of Celtic’s budget. If Celtic turned their noses up at the fees and elected not to bring in Jota and Carter-Vickers, they would have to identify and secure another starting-XI quality winger and centre-back on top of the other priority areas. Such is the stop-gap solution of relying on loans. 

Siegrist arrived on a free transfer, but the fees above when combined with making Daizen Maeda’s loan permanent (£1.45 million) and left-back Alexandro Bernabei’s purchase from Lanus (£3.75 million) mean Celtic have spent around £17.5 million this summer. 

There is a school of thought that because Starfelt and Carter-Vickers are both similar styles of defenders, the latter’s fee might have been better served recruiting that ball-playing centre-back. The majority of this summer’s budget has gone towards consolidating, if not quite reaching, their level of last season. Bernabei is compelling competition for Greg Taylor, but they have lost the pivotal Tom Rogic and the useful Nir Bitton in midfield and not replaced them. 

Budgetary constraints mean the types of deals Celtic are targeting are trickier. For all the optimism about Celtic’s recent recruitment, it is one thing to identify a great player and quite another to get them in the door when most of the budget is gone. 

They are monitoring the free agent and loan markets, as reflected in their unsuccessful enquiries about loaning Manchester City centre-backs Ko Itakura and Taylor Harwood-Bellis, and City Football Group midfielder Vinicius Souza. They will still try to do a permanent deal if the value is there but it is unlikely they will sanction a headline-grabbing fee similar to Carter Vickers’ and Jota’s. 

A Champions League-quality ball-playing centre-back and defensive midfielder would arguably elevate Postecoglou’s side to the next level, and address their problems in Europe. But they are difficult to find within these parameters. 

Ange Postecoglou is likely to be asked about transfer activities following today’s match against Blackburn but it is unlikely that he’ll give away anything other than working towards getting some business completed without being specific.