That was unforgiveable- Sutton calls out Celtic’s failings from Boardroom down

Chris Sutton isn’t giving Celtic a free pass for their Champions League humiliation to Atletico Madrid.

A year after signing off last season’s campaign with a 5-1 defeat in the Bernabeu Celtic were back across the city taking a 6-0 pasting.

Excuses can be offered up but there is no denying that the team and squad is far weaker than last season.

Celtic started 2023 with a nine point lead in the SPFL and were 12 ahead in early April before clinching the title in the second week of May.

Whether they could have signed players to make a mark in the Champions League is up for discussion but none of the seven summer signings were an upgrade on last season’s squad.

With Jota, Carl Starfelt and Aaron Mooy no longer around and injury ruling out Reo Hatate and Liel Abada the squad came up well short against Atletico.

This isn’t a squad, team or club that is progressing and developing with Sutton putting things bluntly to the decision makers in his Daily Record column:

Celtic knew the date of the first Champions League group matches in the second week of May when they won the title against Hearts at Tynecastle and guaranteed their place in them. That is four whole months. That Postecoglou team was building. They had their experiences of the first campaign and those that were staying could use them.

Those who were leaving needed to be replaced properly and strengthening was also needed because, having finished the campaign with two points last term, it was clear that even the side who ended that term required more furnishing. Instead, Celtic went backwards.

You can’t legislate for injuries to the likes of Cameron Carter-Vickers and Liel Abada, but even if those two had been available for Rotterdam, the squad on night one was still weaker than the one that finished last term’s campaign against Real in the Bernabeu. I’m going to repeat myself in one sense. That was unforgivable.

But I’m not going to keep repeating myself and neither should Celtic. This direction of travel has to stop. It has to be altered now. In fact, it should already be happening.

Rodgers is a quality manager. He’ll know what he needs and what he can expect to get on that recruitment front within the parameters of the club model.

As a club, Celtic have to be on that right now. I know the market is changeable and targets can alter, but Rodgers will have a grasp of what he wants and they need to be brought in either in January and on the first of June next year.

Celtic have to go into Champions League matches at full pelt. Not signing Luis Palma on the last days of a window and giving him about five training sessions before he’s herded onto a plane for Rotterdam to be flung in to start a game on MatchDay One.

The team has had to go through their development stage in the most cut-throat environment of the game and that’s not acceptable. Not when the whole club knew four months in advance that these games were coming.

Sutton concluded with a throwback to his playing days and a challenge to those currently in charge:

Celtic’s record in Europe in the five years or so before I signed was awful and we started badly losing to Bordeaux, yet we changed it.

We started winning games. Signings, belief. It just takes a spark, a result or two and it builds. But no-one gives it to you. You have to go and make it happen. And that goes for everyone at the club. From dressing room to boardroom.

Under Postecoglou signings were announced ahead of the January transfer window opening, if there are no deals announced before January 1 it looks like being a frustrating month for supporters looking for signs of progress and respectability in Europe.