The Biggest Risk Isn’t Celtic Losing Arne Engels… It’s Leaving It Too Late

Every transfer window seems to produce the same debate.

Should Celtic sell one of their best players?

Should they cash in while the value of the player is apparently at it’s peak?

Should they reject the money and keep building?

For me, that’s actually the wrong question.

The biggest risk isn’t losing Arne Engels.

The biggest risk is leaving it too late to replace him.

If Nottingham Forest, or anyone else for that matter, eventually come back with an offer that Celtic simply can’t ignore, then football being football and Celtic being Celtic then there’s every chance Engels will move on.

That isn’t what worries me.

What worries me is what comes next.

Or rather, what usually doesn’t come next.

We’ve been here before.

Far too many times.

Celtic have are notorious now for allowing key players to leave before having their successor through the door.

Why?

Why can’t we, just for once, become proactive instead of reactive?

If the club genuinely believes Arne Engels could leave this summer, then surely the work to identify his replacement should already be finished.

We’ve known for months that interest existed.

Back in January, Nottingham Forest were heavily linked with Engels and reports suggested bids in the region of £25 million were rejected.

The feeling at the time was that Celtic simply couldn’t afford to lose him because there wasn’t an adequate replacement available and a real League Title fight to contend with.

The club has had months to prepare for his departure.

Months to scout, months to negotiate.

Such is the conditioning of the fans expectations over the last decade, even this article is about the timing of replacing a key asset in the team.

Incidentally, do you note there is no mention, even from me these days, about the possibility of actually strengthening and enhancing an area of the team.

That is truly depressing when I type that.

Anyway, back to the Engels scenario.

As I say, Celtic have had months to position itself so that if Arne leaves tomorrow, somebody else is already walking through the door.

That’s what good football clubs do.

They don’t wait until a player is holding a scarf above his head somewhere else before scrambling around Europe trying to find somebody similar.

They plan ahead.

Because here’s the nightmare scenario.

Imagine Arne Engels leaves a week before a Champions League qualifier…

We’ve banked the money.

Everyone tells us it’s fantastic business.

Then what?

We go into one of the biggest games of our season without Engels… and without his replacement.

Sound familiar?

I thought so!

We only need to look at last summer.

Nicolas Kühn contributed 21 goals and 15 assists in all competitions before his move away. That’s 36 goal contributions removed from Celtic’s attack in one transfer.

Yet when the Champions League qualifiers arrived, there was no ready-made replacement to provide those goals or creativity.

The consequences were brutal.

Across two legs against Kairat Almaty, Celtic failed to score a single goal.

Zero.

Can feel my rage just now, thinking about how utterly pathetic that whole situation was.

You don’t need to be Pep f**king Guardiola to work out that removing over thirty goal contributions from a team without replacing them might just have something to do with that.

It wasn’t bad luck that Celtic exited the Champions League qualifiers for the 7th time in their last 9 attempts last Summer.

And that’s exactly why this Engels situation concerns me.

It’s not even about Arne himself.

It’s about the cycle we see time and time again.

Sell.

Celebrate the profit.

Promise replacements.

Eventually sign somebody when it is all too late.

Repeat all over again next year.

Champions League qualification isn’t something you can rewind.

Once those nights are gone, they’re gone.

That’s why timing matters every bit as much as the transfer fee itself.

Now, before anyone twists this into me wanting Engels sold, let me make something perfectly clear.

I’d rather he stayed.

I think he’s become one of the most underappreciated players in the Celtic squad.

Social media doesn’t help.

Nobody escapes criticism anymore.

One average performance and apparently they’re “not good enough.”

As I said in my Callum McGregor piece the other day, I don’t think prime Larsson himself would survive Celtic Twitter in 2026 if he went 2 games without a goal.

Yet when I look back at last season, I remember something different.

I remember the way he came back from injury and influenced the title run-in.

I remember Celtic finally looking competitive in Europe again the season before.

We collected 12 points in the Champions League league phase.

We pushed Bayern Munich right to the dying moments over two legs in the knockout play-off.

Engels wasn’t hiding.

He was central to that progress.

There’s a reason there is a host of Club’s from Europe’s top 5 Leagues monitoring him as we speak.

He’s justified a large chunk of the investment made in him.

And if the reported figures are anywhere close to accurate, Celtic stand to make a proper profit on a player who has only been with us 2 years.

That, by any reasonable measure, is a successful signing.

Which actually brings me to another point.

Maybe this is why Celtic shouldn’t be so frightened of spending significant money in the first place.

If Arne Engels decides his future lies elsewhere, he’ll leave with my thanks and my best wishes.

He’s been a success.

I don’t think that’s really up for debate to be honest.

But replacing him isn’t simply about signing another midfielder.

It’s about protecting Celtic’s season before it begins.

Because if the club once again allows a key player to depart before the replacement is ready, we’ll all hear the same excuses.

“It’s a difficult market.”

“These things take time.”

“We’re working hard behind the scenes.”

We’ve heard them all before.

The truth is, this one shouldn’t take anyone by surprise.

The warning signs have been there since January.

The preparation time has been there since January.

The opportunity has been there since January.

So if Arne Engels does leave, don’t judge Celtic on the size of the transfer fee.

Judge them on what happens next.

Because the biggest risk isn’t losing Arne Engels.

It’s leaving it too late to replace him.

Keep Your Eyes on The Board.