Quality- Rodgers lays down his terms and timeline for Celtic’s summer recruitment

Brendan Rodgers has underlined the need to bring in quality signings this summer.

Celtic may be just one point away from winning the SPFL Premiership title but there is no chance of the manager easing back to accept plaudits for this seasons efforts.

Recruitment last summer was a major issue as a raft of young, inexperienced players were brought to the club with only Luis Palma making any sort of positive impact on a disappointing Champions League campaign.

Maik Nawrocki, Marco Tilio and Kwon Hyeok-kyu failed to make it into the Champions League squad with none of the summer recruits making it into the Starting XI in Saturday’s Glasgow Derby.

Mark Lawwell paid the price for that failure when it was announced in March that he was leaving his job as Head of Scouting and Recruitment with no official announcement on his successor or a new look to that area of the club.

A year into the job it seems that Rodgers has very firm views on what is required with trust in Michael Nicholson and the Celtic board to deliver the improvements required.

5 minutes 40 seconds

Well, we have to, that’s pretty clear. I am really excited about moving forward and moving into a bright future with the club. This season has been a real challenge and the squad is not as strong as I would like it to have been. What the players have given me until this point has been absolutely brilliant. Our job going forward next year is to be stronger, much stronger. That is something that is well underway.

Further on ( 9 minutes 30 seconds) the Celtic boss went into greater detail

Do you envisage getting business done sooner rather than later in the summer?

I think every coach and manager would like to be able to do that. There are definitely positions that we’d like to have finalised sooner rather than later. Ideally, if we can do that then great, but what’s really important for us this summer is getting the level of quality that I want into the squad.

That will be key for the growth of this team. As I’ve said, the guys in this team have been fantastic this season, but next season we need more depth in the squad. In my past time here, I was going away to Ross County making eight changes. I was bringing into that team [players like] Stuart Armstrong, Ryan Christie – these guys have shown that they’re Premier League quality.

I remember going away to Dubai to our training camp, and, in a proper game, the second team beat the starters 5-0. That gave me great food for thought then when I came back for the second part of the season. It was a proper football game.

That told me the depth that was required and I think that’s something that’s definitely required here because we lost a bit of that in the summer, and no doubt that we’ll need to restructure that going forward. We’ve got some fantastic players here and we want to add to that.

Are you and the likes of Michael Nicholson all on the same page off the pitch?

Every season has to be a learning season on and off the pitch. I’ve gained nothing but support from Michael [Nicholson] and the people here but going forward, the football strategy is very much there in terms of what it is we want to bring in.

It’s not about numbers, it’s about increasing the quality of the squad but that’s for later on, we still have a massive job to do over the next three games.