Brendan Rodgers faces one major obstacle for his plans of a January clear out- contracts.
Moving players out of Celtic, largely attracted to sign by the wages on offer is a difficult business when their terms are unlikely to be matched elsewhere after falling out of favour at a new club soon after joining.
At the end of the summer transfer window 33 players squeezed into the team picture with only Daniel Kelly yet to make a first team appearance. James McCarthy, under contract until May 2025 didn’t make the photo-shoot.
During the summer Celtic brought in seven new players, of them Marco Tilio and Kwon Hyeok-kyu have yet to play a single minute. None of the others have been regular starters with Luis Palma and Yang Hyun-jun each starting three SPFL Premiership matches.
Signed in January Yuki Kobayashi has been on the bench once with Tomoki Iwata making three appearances as a substitute. Since coming off the bench as a late substitute at Ibrox Alexandro Bernabei hasn’t made a matchday squad.
Addressing the issue of his bloated squad, Rodgers told The Sun:
It’s more quality than quantity, but I think there will be more going out than coming in.
There will be players who will be here for six months and won’t have played.
It’s no fault of them. The squad is a lot bigger than I would want. I think there will be more players who will look to go out and get game time.
Of course, over the coming windows we can look to improve the quality of the squad.
We have enough development players. I love that. It is what I have done all my life, work with those players, but you need ones that can come in.
Moving those players on is the task facing Mark Lawwell, less than a year after he recruited them.
In terms of contracts Bernabei has a deal running until 2027 with Kobayashi, Kwon and Tilio signed up until 2028, Iwata’s contract length is unknown.
Sead Haksabanovic, Yosuke Ideguchi and Liam Shaw are already out on loan, as third choice keeper and left out of the Champions League squad Ben Siegrist’s prospects look bleak but he does have the comfort of a contract that runs until May 2026.
Even if the nine players listed in the two lines above are moved on there is still a surplus of players in a couple of positions with Cameron Carter-Vickers, Liam Scales, Gus Lagerbielke, Maik Nawrocki and Stephen Welsh battling for two places in central defence.
On the wings Rodgers can select from Daizen Maeda, Liel Abada, Luis Palma, Yang Hyun-jun, James Forrest and Mikey Johnston for two positions.
CLICK HERE for Transfermarkt breakdown of Celtic contracts.
I am going to say this. I don’t think Rodgers has it. He relegated his last club and his team choices are strange to say the least. Johnson and Forrest?
I am not sure what imput he had on the last transfer window but it was a shocking disappointment. You only have to buy one or two excellent players to make a difference not a bus load of average ones. The board seems to be doing their best to copy Sevco and the result is. as the article states, we have too many average players chasing the same positions and now we can’t get rid of them.
Every week Celtic are faced with eleven men behind the ball and he is still playing a passing game between the midfield and the defence.
The only way to beat that is to play fast one touch football something the coaches do not seem to have the abilty to teach as well as midfileders who can run inside the box with the ball as opposed to papping it out to the wing only to see it crossed into a ruck of defenders.
Why in God’s name do you need a holding midfielder when the opposition have “parked the bus” I have no idea.
Scales seems to be the only one who can run into the opposition half with the ball with the ball
I agree Charlie, Rodgers thinking is that if we retain possession of the ball then the opposition can’t hurt us but against packed defences we are struggling to hurt them. Our current crop of wingers seem incapable of hitting the byline and putting the ball into the box for Kyogo who has scored an incredible amount of goals per touches during games.
This should be seen as a clear indication that Lawwell junior hasn’t a clue what he’s doing. We only needed 3 solid signings in the summer, why 9? The squad was always going to be bloated, paying fees and wages to guys that were never going to be regulars.
Too many punts and not enough attention to what the first team needs.
January needs to be used to address first team deficiencies, we don’t need any more Lawwell half arsed punts.