The Celtic side that left the Champions League on Wednesday night is unlikely to be seen again on the big stage.
Over the course of the last 15 months an identifiable team has emerged, the early signings and ‘left-overs’ were joined by Jota, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Giorgos Giakoumakis at the end of August, then in January Daizen Maeda, Matt O’Riley and Reo Hatate were added to create a title winning mix.
The days of the Lisbon Lions or even Martin O’Neill’s Seville side where a group of 13 or 14 players stuck around are gone with Ange Postecoglou getting ready for the evolution of his squad.
Over the last decade Celtic have sold Virgil van Dijk, Victor Wanyama, Kieran Tierney and Moussa Dembele for serious money with the fees generally frittered away on speculative replacements.
After selling Dembele the hoops brought in Vakoun Bayo, Patryk Klimala and Albian Ajeti who all proved to be costly failures.
Postecoglou plans to do things differently, telling the Daily Record:
If they are going to leave us, we are going to get some revenue in. I don’t fear losing our players. I see that as part of the process.
If you look at clubs who do well at Champions League level that are our size, what do they do? They develop players, sell them on and replace them with better versions, hopefully.
That is where our growth lies. It is part of the process. I don’t fear that. That has to happen for us to grow. We need to be bringing money in to be able to keep bringing better players to our football club.
It will be painful seeing certain players leave Celtic but 18 months ago Jota, Kyogo, Hatate, O’Riley and others were almost unknown to hoops supporters with replacements already out there and identified.
Two different models. One relies on footballing knowledge. The other relies on corporate operations.