Celtic’s once vaunted transfer policy is dead in the water. Once the remaining valuable assets in this team are sold off, there are no more
Eric Knott 
DUNDEE, SCOTLAND - MARCH 22: Celtic Interim Chairman Brian Wilson, Chief Executive Officer Michael Nicholson and Chief Financial Officer Chris McKay during a William Hill Premiership match between Dundee United and Celtic at the CalForth Construction Arena at Tannadice, on March 22, 2026, in Dundee, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Celtic once prided itself in it’s ability to spot a player, bring him in for a pittance, and then sell him on for a large profit.
At this moment in time, a few decent assets remain at the club, but once they are sold on, there will be little to nothing of value remaining in our much weakened squad.
The main assets at the moment would be Arne Engels, Daizen Maeda, Reo Hatate, and possibly Benjamin Nygren.
Alistair Johnston is returning from a long term injury, so it will be a while before he regains value of any magnitude.
He certainly won’t be in the shop window this summer.
The same applies to Felipe Jota and CCV.
Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate have probably devalued from their peak values.
This season has certainly done them no favours.
Nottingham Forest’s previous interest in Arne Engels makes him Celtic’s prime asset at the moment.
But considering what we paid for him, we won’t be making the huge kind of profits we’ve seen in the past.
After the above mentioned players, what remains?
I think it would depress you if I was to run through it, so I won’t.
The sad reality is that Paul Tisdale’s introduction to Celtic as Head of Football Operations caused detrimental damage to our much vaunted transfer policy.
Tisdale got the memo when it came to buying cheap, but nothing he brought in on the cheap will ever make any money for Celtic.
He certainly didn’t have an eye for hidden talent.
Even the players we spent substantial sums on have been flops.
Michel Ange-Balikwisha leads the way on that front.
We may, in time, get a decent return on Sebastian Tounekti, but his lack of consistency at the moment isn’t exactly doing him any favours.
But it wasn’t just Tisdale’s introduction that broke the transfer machine at Celtic, there’s much more to it than that.
A serious lack of football minded people in the boardroom has also contributed to this.
Lawyers and accountants do not understand the art of the transfer.
They may understand how to manage the money side of this, but when it comes to a prime acquisition in the transfer market of a relatively cheap player, Celtic is sorely lacking in this department.
We do not have a team, or network of scouts spread far and wide across the globe with the sole purpose of spotting young up and coming talents.
Instead, and especially over the last few years, we take gambles on bringing in players on the cheap, in the hopes that somewhere amongst them, we’ll find a gem.
Thanks to Tisdale, and Mark Lawwell before him, it has now been some considerable time since that happened.
The 2023 summer window is a prime example of that.
10 players acquired, and not one has made Celtic anything near what the last two big sellers at the club made.
We made £25 million for Felipe Jota in 2023, and then in 2024, a similar figure with add ons, for Matt O’Riley.
There has not been a sniff of an amount like that since then.
Both Jota and O’Riley were acquired during Ange Postecoglou’s time at the club.
This was an interregnum from the club from their tried and trusted way of operating in the transfer market.
Or more appropriately, Peter Lawwell’s way of operating.
A determination to return to that particular model has landed us where we find ourselves today.
It also resulted in expediting Ange Postecoglou’s departure from the club.
Proof positive that it is an outdated and archaic transfer policy which clearly no longer works.
Football moves with the times.
Celtic do not.
Celtic regresses.
Over on the Celtic Star, Conall McGinty wrote a very good article on Celtic’s regression.
He likened it to the rise and fall of the Blackberry mobile phone brand.
I’d highly recommend giving it your time because it is the perfect metaphor for what Celtic has become.
Everybody is now acutely aware of what awaits Celtic in the coming summer.
The kind of rebuild that is now required is nothing short of monumental.
Try to picture the Fawlty Towers episode called “The Builders”.
Then picture the cowboy builder, O’Reilly, from that espisode.
Imagine then that O’Reilly represents the Celtic Board, and that he is in charge of the summer rebuild at Celtic.
Are you getting the picture now?
At the moment, a lot of us in the blogosphere need to use metaphors to get our points across when it comes to the Celtic board.
Conall did it yesterday in his article on the Celtic Star.
Today, I’m using O’Reilly as my metaphor.
Everything O’Reilly put his hand to in Fawlty Towers in building terms was liable to come crashing down at any minute.
He was hired to construct a wall for Basil Fawlty, he got as far as dumping a pile of bricks in his carpark and leaving them there for months.
Is the picture getting clearer?
If Michael Nicholson is CEO at Celtic for this summer rebuild, we will get as far as the pile of bricks being dumped in the yard, and no further.
If we’re lucky.
Nicholson is incapable of overseeing a squad rebuild of this magnitude.
The only way this can be financed is if some of our prime assets are sold in the summer.
Because as we all know, the rainy day fund will not be touched.
This club refuses to operate in a transfer defecit.
And while they might think that is prudent, they will further weaken a squad that is already on it knees under the guise of “financing” the rebuild.
What they will attempt to bring in, if their past record is anything to go by, doesn’t bear thinking about.
They will also attempt to bank a good chunk of the earnings from the sales of any prime assets.
This has always been the case in every transfer window.
And they know no other way to operate.
If, and this is a big if, a new manager is in place, he will be in place on the proviso that he is a ‘yes man’, and he will have agreed to work with what he’s given.
That prospect alone should frighten the life out of us.
Finally, and the possibility of this scenario happening is now becoming ominously likely, if we finish 3rd in the League, the UEFA Conference League qualifiers will be what awaits us in the summer.
We will be told that this self-enforced relegation to Europe’s third tier competition will have to result in us “tightening our belt”.
The men telling us this, if they even bother to show us that courtesy, will fail to see the irony in the message they’re delivering.
That irony being that they were the ones who caused it to happen.
Not the Celtic players.
Not the Celtic fans.
And certainly not the human shield they made for themselves, Martin O’Neill.
It is looking less and less likely that we’re going to be shot of these parasites this summer.
As much as nearly every Celtic fan aches and yearns for that to happen.
Just as we said on the Trinity Tims podcast on Monday, we have not hit rock bottom yet.
We may not even even hit rock bottom in the summer.
Rock bottom is dependent on the level of destruction these incompetents will continue to wreak on Celtic.
And how long they will continue to get away with that.
This is our unfortunate reality right now.
In the short-term, we have to hope and pray that during the international break, Martin O’Neill recognises the fallacy in continuing to deploy a 4-3-3 formation.
I cannot stress this any clearer, continuing to deploy that formation will 100% ensure we do not win the League.
If last Sunday was not proof positive of that, I have no idea what is.
Should O’Neill decide to ditch it, then we have some hope of pulling this out of the fire.
Remember 2008?
Nobody gave us a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the league, and we pulled it out of the fire then.
We can still do it now, but fundamental changes need to be made in the playing set up.
Winning the League has now become the only remaining beacon of hope we have.
If only to spare us from a summer of utter misery.
I wish I could put a more positive spin on things, but I can’t.
Right here, right now, our priority is winning the League.
We can deal with what comes after that then.
The alternative does not bear thinking about.
Finishing 3rd is a ground zero event for this club.
What is harder to swallow is that it is a self-imposed ground zero.
Then, what would be criminal is that those who self-imposed it would be tasked with fixing the very mess they created.
Which, in it’s own right, is a horrific, nightmare inducing thought.
It would be laughable, if it wasn’t so seriously detrimental to the future well being of our club.
But it is serious.
Deadly serious.
Key Takeaways
- Celtic struggles to spot and profit from talent, with key assets either injured or devalued.
- The club’s transfer policy suffers due to a lack of football minds on the board, leading to poor acquisitions.
- Recent signings have failed to yield significant profits, highlighting an outdated approach to transfers.
- A rebuild is necessary, but it could lead to financial constraints and further deterioration of the squad.
- Winning the League remains essential to avoid a disastrous season and self-imposed ground zero for the club.
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The only way to get rid of this board is by cutting off their money supply. Season book renewal is the major factor in play now. There is no point in stating the obvious of failures of a board who is accountability rests with DD. Let’s not forget that the supporters are the parasites. Now it comes to each person decision as Season book holders. Do you want to be treated like trash while being a cash cow or are you struggling moraly with indecision and that paralysing fear of losing your seat. To be honest it’s never yours. It’s not like paying a mortgage and it’s yours in the end know matter how many years you have sat on that seat it will never be long to you.
It’s hard to know Eric and I totally get that some fans will automatically buy their season ticket(s) but if enough don’t……at this moment, the one thing the suits will listen to and act upon is, the sound of silence – as in, the lack of jingling in their pockets from our money. I felt in January that nicholson would go in summer. But now, it’s hard to say for sure. I hope both he and McKay does. And Hargreaves. That would be a good start. It would at least allow for a ceo to come in and know how to negotiate, how to run a business and how to delegate power, i.e. let the manager manage and bring in a DoF who can run transfers etc. Oh and a scouting network that scouts effectively! Still hope Martin stays in an exec role, less demands on his family time but despite the stress, he loves the club and likely wouldn’t say no to an exec job. HH
The first person who needs to go is the Moustache Eric. As long as he is there, which is hardly ever, there is no hope for us. I don’t think I need to go into any reasons for this, it has been there for all to see since Brendan Rodgers first spell as manager.