£19m Celtic Bench Exposed as Sky Sports Says Every Change Made Them Weaker
A look at every Celtic substitute available against LASK exposes a bench full of prospects, backups and millions of pounds that still could not maintain the level of the starting XI.
Phillip Cooney 
The Celtic Champions League bench should tell the board everything they need to know about what went wrong against LASK.
Martin O’Neill had 12 substitutes available in Austria.
Look through them individually and one question becomes impossible to avoid.
Was this really a bench built to take Celtic into the Champions League?
No disrespect is intended towards the players themselves. Several have served Celtic well, while others still deserve time.
The issue is squad construction.
When Celtic’s starting XI began to tire and LASK took control, O’Neill needed replacements capable of maintaining the level.
Instead, Celtic became weaker.
That is an astonishing position for Celtic to find themselves in during a Champions League play-off.
Celtic’s £19m bench raises serious questions
Start with the most expensive options.
Haissem Hassan cost an initial £6million, potentially rising to £9million.
Nobody should be writing Hassan off. We have barely seen him.
That actually strengthens the criticism of Celtic’s planning.
The club signed one of its major summer recruits so late in the process that O’Neill admitted Hassan had done very little training following the World Cup.
Celtic got the player through the door before LASK, but apparently not early enough to have him properly prepared for the biggest fixtures of the summer.
Michel-Ange Balikwisha arrived in a deal worth up to £5million.
A year later, he still has not established himself as someone Celtic can depend upon when the stakes are highest.
O’Neill did not even use him as Celtic desperately searched for an answer in Austria.
Sebastian Tounekti cost £5.2million.
Again, the criticism is not personal.
However, Celtic should expect a £5.2million signing to increase competition in the first team.
If replacing one of your starters noticeably reduces the team’s level, recruitment has not strengthened the squad enough.
Then the fees fall dramatically.
Reo Hatate cost around £1.4million and has been outstanding value over his Celtic career.
Luke McCowan arrived for approximately £1million.
Liam Scales cost around £500,000.
Johnny Kenny was another inexpensive signing from Sligo Rovers.
Callum Osmand arrived from Fulham for an undisclosed development-related fee.
Ross Doohan returned on a free transfer.
Dane Murray, Anthony Ralston and James Forrest all came through Celtic’s academy.
Add the known and widely reported initial fees together and there was roughly £19million of transfer investment on that bench, before Osmand’s undisclosed figure is considered.
Yet most of that money is concentrated in three attacking players.
That is the problem.
This is not Champions League squad depth
There is nothing wrong with academy players.
There is nothing wrong with inexpensive signings either. Hatate himself proves that transfer fees do not determine quality.
Every successful club also needs squad players.
But Celtic cannot fill a Champions League bench with prospects, inexpensive backups and expensive signings who are either not ready or have not established themselves.
The manager needs alternatives who can come on without substantially weakening the side.
Against LASK, that simply was not the case.
Sky Sports went even further.
Its analysis said Celtic still had “gaping holes” in the squad before concluding that the club was not fully prepared for the tie.
They highlighted Celtic finishing the game with Murray, Scales, Ralston and McCowan on the pitch as evidence of how threadbare the squad had become.
That is not hindsight from an angry supporter.
It is an independent assessment of Celtic’s squad after their biggest game of the season.
O’Neill’s admission says everything
Perhaps the most damning comment came from Celtic’s own manager.
After the defeat, O’Neill admitted:
“We know that we are a million miles from the finished article.”
Think about that statement.
Celtic were a million miles from the finished article AFTER the Champions League qualifier had already been played.
When exactly was this squad supposed to be finished?
September?
October?
The Champions League does not wait for Celtic’s recruitment department.
Everyone at the club knew when these qualifiers would be played.
Celtic knew Kieran Tierney needed genuine cover.
They knew Alistair Johnston was injured.
Arne Engels departed without a replacement being ready for LASK.
Hassan was signed but was not sufficiently prepared.
Balikwisha had still not established himself.
Tounekti had not proved capable of raising the level.
Then O’Neill looked towards his bench while a four-goal aggregate advantage disappeared.
What did he find?
Not enough.
Celtic had spent money. That cannot be denied.
However, spending money and building a Champions League squad are two completely different things.
A proper European squad gives the manager options.
It allows him to replace tired players with footballers of similar quality.
Celtic’s substitutes against LASK repeatedly reduced the quality on the pitch.
That should never happen at a club with Celtic’s resources and ambitions.
The board knew the date.
They knew the weaknesses.
They knew what qualification was worth.
Yet Celtic still entered the defining tie of their summer with what Sky Sports described as a threadbare squad.
That is not Champions League preparation.
It is another gamble that spectacularly failed.
They should also have been aware of the Ox suspension.
All the rightful criticism of the board will have no effect on them. They are a bunch of shambolic incompetents.
They haven’t a clue about football.
They will never change.
Same old, same old story.
No ambition at board level.
Signings not made…depending on qualification and those made were done so too late. They ought to have been registered in June and given a whole preseason.
We all know/knew who was going and what we needed…particularly an enforcer in midfield and a striker?
That said , there is NO way we should surrender a 4 goal lead.
Forget about the bench we had wrong tactics,playing from the back when Lask had a high press whats wrong with a long ball?
At 4-0 we should have parked the bus with Hogh as a lone striker, how can Celtic bin a 4 goal lead? Naivety on the coaches part.
As Calmac said we were lucky at Parkhead but the coaching staff didnt spot it.
Where was the new multi million pounds Egypt international player Haissem Hassan the other night ? I thought he was notably bought for games and nights against LASK …. quality over quantity ? Yet was nowhere to be seen ! It’s details like this that make the result even worse for me !
Deflecting again?.
I’ve been asked more times than I can remember over recent years why the Orcs are such a miserable side and I always give the same (to me, glaringly obvious) answer in that they just don’t have good enough footballers, invariably not a single one that i’d exchange for a Celtic regular in the same position. I’m sure over the last 10-12 years there may be the odd exception to that rule but in general i’ll stand by it.
I try to take off my green-tinted specs when analysing our own side and tbh, how many of our players would get into that Lask side? In the first leg you might understandably have cited Duran, Nygren and maybe even Hogh.
On the basis of the return leg even they’d be further down the line than a few others in the hoops.
Individually and collectively we were absolutely garbage as was our game management on the night. That last part was either omitted by the Management team or miscommunicated or misunderstood or just ignored by the players.
Going forward there are some deeper issues on the playing side.
It’s a worry to me that we’ve become so dependent on Calmac that we have no other playmakers in the side. Even a servant as great as him can’t last forever. Who are we grooming to replace him? Are we even asking that question? Is it possible that we might consider a two-footed midfield replacement so that our play doesn’t continue to be one-dimensional and utterly predictable.
It’s also a worry that we thought we could go into these ties with a weak bombscare in Trusty. Who was surprised to see him being outmuscled at the slightest bump?
I could go on about perceived bigger gaps at right-back, back-up at left-back, and others besides but Calmac is a declining driving force for our team which is a worry when all the soundbites are that we have to match his ambitions. Think back to Tavpen and all his regularly repeated excuses that it’s not good enough, we need to do better, the fans deserve more. Forgetting about our domestic dominance, see any similarities with what Calmac came out with after this recent debacle? Trusty will prove to be worrying during games against even lower spl sides as he always is, never mind Europa league sides. The fact that our management team cannot see this is also a worry. I’ve said my bit on our board of clueless morons who don’t deserve a fanbase like ours so i’m not going down that one on this again. They have absolutely no idea about football and it makes me wonder what goes through their melons when they watch the side in action. I’m not going to second-guess that one. It would wrongly suggest that something is in fact going through their heads.