Just before the international break, our manager made it pretty clear that there were too many players at the club and that some were going to have to go.
The press picked up on this briefly and it was interesting listening to the Sportsound team in the wake of the St.Johnstone mauling trying to figure out who he could be making reference to.
Ryan Christie, perhaps they wondered? Even though he’s been actually making the squad quite regularly this season.
Then they moved onto Nir Bitton before apparently hitting a brick wall.
Yep, they were absolutely flummoxed as to who Brendan could have been referring to.
It actually just goes to show just how far out of the picture some of our players are that football analysts paid to research and discuss the game on national radio couldn’t even think of anyone outside of two players, one of whom is clearly not one of the individuals Brendan was alluding to.
Christie might still be moved along in January and I’d be surprised if he’s still here next season but currently, he is involved albeit sparingly.
Bitton would definitely be one on the list and of course, he hasn’t been helped by a recent spate of injuries the legitimacy of which I doubt. After all, he’s made it quite clear on social media that he is more than happy to sit on the sidelines and collect his wages until his contract runs down.
But as well as those two there are some pretty startlingly obvious candidates that must be right at the top.
Firstly Scott Allen who joined us from Hibs in the summer of 2015 and has played about 17 times all in mostly from the bench.
Like many, I presumed he would be back off to Hibs permanently after a successful loan spell there last season but it would appear that Hibs handling of the John McGinn situation hit them with the double whammy of ultimately receiving less money and not having a prayer of being entertained by the Celtic board in regards to any further transfer business.
Along with him, there is Eboue Kouassi who has been at the club since January 2017 yet has only had a total of 19 outings despite costing us a pretty hefty fee of around £3 million from Krasnodar. He’s still only 20 but by all accounts had it made pretty clear to him in the summer that he had little to no future at Celtic Park. He then did himself no favours with a shambolic performance against Hearts at Tynecastle in August as we lost 1-0 and after that, his days were numbered. But as the transfer window shut Kouassi decided he’d prefer to continue to cut a forlorn figure on the bench this season as opposed to actually playing football somewhere else.
Then there’s Jonny Hayes. Jonny has been a serial bench warmer since arriving from Aberdeen in the summer of 2017. Despite suffering a serious injury in his time at the club he has actually pulled on the hoops 20 times scoring once but has failed to make anything like an impact. He basically looks out of his depth if truth be told and it didn’t help that he was effectively taking over the position occupied by Paddy Roberts the season before. There was, of course, a marked difference in quality between the two and last seasons upsurge in form by James Forest made Hayes potential contribution to proceedings look even more redundant.
We then get to Cristian Gamboa. He arrived for a ÂŁ1 million from WBA not long after Brendan took over the hot seat and after being thrown to the wolves against Barcelona in the Nou Camp for his debut in which we were beaten 7-0 he has never really recovered. Indeed since then, he has made only 19 more appearances but after an impressive showing, this summer at the World Cup with Costa Rica hopes abounded that he may be given a new lease of life especially considering the increasingly worrying displays by the faded Mikel Lustig at right back. And to begin with, Gamboa did slot in for the Swede who was still returning from his own extended World Cup duty at the start of the season with a particularly impressive display away against Rosenborg in the Champions League qualifiers coming to mind. But since then it’s been a case of ‘as you were’ with Gamboa now rarely even featuring in the squad and this is despite Lustig continuing to look a shadow of his former self.
But I do of course save the best for last. That being the fabled Marvin Compper who has now achieved a mythical status of that approaching the Yeti or Bigfoot. A man so far out of the picture rumour has it he’s training at Barrowfield. A man so seldom seen in the clubs colours they say he cites Martin Hayes and Freddie Ljungberg as his Celtic heroes.
Good old Marvin eh?! A player so good our top-notch recruitment coach Lee Congerton tried to sign him three times at previous clubs before finally reeling in his man at Celtic. Oh yes. Lee only says yes to the best.
Who’s to say why Compper hasn’t made it. Clearly, he had a fallout with John Kennedy back in January during our winter break training camp in Dubai. God knows what he said but it was bad enough to have him excluded from events for the past nine months barring one runout in a Scottish cup tie against St.Mirren last season. Even with a centre-back crisis for our crucial Champions League qualifier against AEK Athens Marvin wasn’t even considered. And of course, this has led to other rumours surfacing with the old chestnut that he slept with another players wife even doing the rounds though of course nobody actually knows who’s wife it was or if the player even plays for Celtic.
It could just be that Marvin is mince. His fleeting display against the Buddies would appear to give some weight to that. To be pretty blunt about it he looked pish.
The real worrying aspect though is not that he was signed but how we’ve dealt with it ever since.
Sometimes clubs sign bad players. Sometimes players get homesick and just don’t fancy it. Sometimes payers turn out to have a reputation abroad built on sand and to not actually be up to what it takes to play for a club like Celtic or any other big club for that matter. And sometimes they blatantly only want to collect a wage and couldn’t really give two-stuffs about what anybody thinks. Ian Wright anyone?
But when it hasn’t worked it hasn’t worked so you deal with it. Marvin should have been punted in the summer. If he didn’t want to leave then pay him off. Better he counts his money at another club as opposed to hanging around Lennoxtown bumping his gums about what he thinks of the coaching staff to other players and creating unnecessary levels of innuendo amongst our own support and mocking from our rivals.
I mean at least Mohammed Bangura had the good grace to go out on loan.
There are now rumours that Daniel Arzani might be returning to Manchester City much earlier than his initial two-year loan deal suggested. So another Charly Musonda then.
It all begs the question what the hell is going on with recruitment at the club?
Is it Lawwell? Is it Congerton? Who knows. Either way, it has to be addressed in the next transfer window both in terms of incoming and outgoing and before then the board has to be run over the coals for this at the next AGM.
Apparently, Marvin Compper will be in attendance. Here’s his latest picture just in case you go and can’t spot him.
....Always A Tim! 