Brendan Rodgers is stepping up his control over Celtic

Brendan Rodgers has indicated a subtle change in policy that should see more joined up thinking in Celtic recruitment.

No issue has generated more attention and discussion than transfer policies and strategies since the Irishman returned to the club last June.

Initially he praised the brilliant work being carried out by Mark Lawwell but as a project filled summer transfer window came towards an end Rodgers was quite adamant that as coach/manager his role was to work with the players that the club supplied him with.

By the time that Celtic went out of the Champions League to Lazio the manager disclosed that his initial squad assessment was that four quality additions were required.

It is safe to assume that with minimal Champions League involvement and players like Marco Tilio, Maik Nawrocki and Kwon Hyeok-kyu failing to even make the squad that the quality threshold hadn’t been met.

Following another poor transfer window in January Celtic announced on March 1 that Mark Lawwell and Joe Dudgeon were leaving the club but since then there has been no comment about what the reshaped Scouting and Recruitment Department will look like.

At yesterday’s all-in media conference Stephen McGowan of the Daily Mail asked Rodgers about his involvement in future recruitment.

Brendan, the club are looking to reshape scouting and recruitment and so on. Are you involved yourself in that and are you able to think about the future when you’re embroiled in the season?

Yeah, absolutely. I’m a part of that process of course. You’re always thinking short, medium and longer-term, especially when you want to be here for that longer term. I’d love that opportunity to help shape that. I’ve got a lot of experience in the game.

The game is moving and changing all the time and I want to try and offer opportunities here for more of our younger players. In order to do that, you need to plan that and you need to have everything in place that is going to give those guys the opportunity.

We need to take a greater focus on our loan players. We’ll have someone in a role that comes in and works specifically on that and working with those young players and others that are out on loan and helping that pathway into the first-team be clearer. I’m very much a part of that.

Are you getting closer to making some appointments? 

We still have some very good staff here that are working, and some staff that were looking to bring in behind the scenes, and that will continue. We don’t go shouting about it, we’ll tell you, and we’ll be done, but there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes in order to do that. 

Summer recruitment plans should be at an advanced stage at the moment but it seems likely that some serious squad cutting is required alongside highly selective recruitment.

Tilio, Kwon and Alexandro Bernabei have gone out on loan since the turn of the year with little prospect of having a future at Celtic, unlike Mikey Johnston who Rodgers spoke highly of yesterday.

Sead Haksabanovic is unlikely to be in Rodgers’ future plans while others like Ben Siegrist, Oh Hyeon-gyu, Yuki Kobayashi and Odin Thiago Holm seem to be drifying further and further away from the Starting XI.

? LISTEN: “I felt when I came in the summer that we probably needed four quality players.”

? Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers says the club are working hard to add top level players to their squad. pic.twitter.com/1xwfCY5Zab

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