At least one central defender will be moving out of Celtic in January as well as Nat Phillips who is on loan from Liverpool.
The size of the squad has become apparent over recent weeks with summer signings struggling for game time and often to make the substitute bench on matchdays.
Liam Scales has been a constant presence in defence since August, mostly alongside Cameron Carter-Vickers but in midweek against Feyenoord he was partnered by Stephen Welsh for 75 minutes before Gus Lagerbielke’s dramatic appearance.
At £4.3n from Lech Poznan Maik Nawrocki was the most expensive summer signing but speaking at today’s media conference John Kennedy admitted that it was one area of the squad where he expected to see departures.
About the centre-back situation with Carter-Vickers coming back into full fitness now, you have as many as six or seven centre-backs. How do you view that, and do you think there will be a primary pairing that will emerge? Scales has played really well so far this season. Cameron’s been here for two years and has been brilliant. What do you see?
It’s a position where we have a lot of players. In January there’s going to have to be a couple that will go and get game-time elsewhere and trim the squad down a little bit. If anything, we’re carrying a lot of numbers, so there will be a lot on the periphery who we just need to go and get game-time or maybe move on. Everyone will have their own agenda on that.
Yuki Kobayashi looks certain to return to the J-League in January but it looks like two from Welsh, Nawrocki and Lagerbielke will remain as competition and back up for Scales and Carter-Vickers.
Tomorrow’s team-sheet should give an indication of who will be remaining next month with Welsh and Lagerbielke having made strong cases to remain involved following their call ups against Feyenoord.
The obvious candidate from those three is Lagerbielke. He is weak in comparison to the other two. He was always only signed because we thought we were losing Scales, then when Nawrocki was injured just prior to the UEFA deadline, the exact same thing happened with Phillips. He has been a flop, and as much as Lagerbielke scored a goal for the memory books on Wednesday, he is not strong enough to fill a Celtic jersey. He scored yes, but it was also redemption for the major part he played in the equalizer by the Dutch.
He would not be missed, and he will not be competition for a place among for healthy players.
Welsh playing in midweek summed up the problem we have with signing so many projects, as I thought he was excellent. Especially for a guy that hasn’t had a sniff of a game in ages. Compare him with Phillips vs Killie and it’s night and day. Yet the minute some of the others are available, Welsh will be bombed out.
It does just show, though, that we already have decent players on the books – but too many are just rotting away in the reserves, basically playing amateur stuff in the Lowland League. Guys like Welsh, Vata and others like the lad Frame that came on, are better than that and should be in and around the squad.
They are the ones that should be getting developed as projects. They are certainly a better bet than some of the “project” duds we have spent millions on, who are higher up the pecking order purely by virtue of their transfer fees, rather than their performances.
Get rid of this scatter gun, cheapskate, high numbers-low value, pennywise-poundfoolish, gamble of a recruitment “strategy”, focus any spending on a smaller number of proper, quality, first team ready signings and give those already on the books in the academy and reserves at least some hope of a way into the squad and some game time.
Maybe that way we might see the Ben Doaks, Rocco Vatas and so on flying down the wing in the Hoops, rather than picking up the tab for their development and losing them for peanuts.
Editor: A similar point was made at the AGM, the projects should be our in-house players but for a variety of reasons the Academy has virtually dried up, players and parents compare Aaron Hickey with Karamoko Dembele and Owen Moffat and try their luck elsewhere. Lowland League should be for toughening up 16 and 17 year olds for one season only. No genuine pathway around.