When the transfer window slammed shut on Monday night, Celtic fans would have felt a mixture of anger, disillusionment, and perhaps even relief that the embarrassment was finally over.
The richest club in Scotland was in a state of total panic on deadline day, scrambling hopelessly from one botched deal to another and running around with its hair on fire.
How can an institution with cash reserves of almost £80million in the bank commit such a heinous act of self-sabotage with regards to the playing squad? It is gross negligence on an industrial scale.
Celtic have a long history of moving at a glacial pace in the transfer market. They always tend to do their business late, but this time they failed to do much business at all.
In desperate need of a new striker, they tried to low-ball Anderlecht to sign Danish international Kasper Dolberg, which left the door open for Ajax to swoop in and hijack the deal.
Then the fun really began. A loan enquiry was made for Chelsea’s David Datro Fofana, only for the player to reject Celtic in favour of a move to Charlton.
Brendan Rodgers must have been left perplexed by Celtic’s business in the window
The Parkhead club did bring in Sebastian Tounekti of Hammarby on deadline day
In the end, Fofana’s move to The Valley never materialised due to a failure to complete the paperwork in time, but that couldn’t spare Celtic’s blushes. It was mortifying.
Being rejected by a Stamford Bridge dud who would rather play English Championship football with Charlton summed up a truly shambolic transfer window for Brendan Rodgers and the Celtic hierarchy.
Trying to grab what they could from the buffet before there was nothing left, Rodgers found an old number for Kelechi Iheanacho and gave it a whirl.
The pair know each other from their time together at Leicester and, with Iheanacho’s contract at Sevilla being cancelled, it’s a deal that was completed last night.
But signing a player who turned down Celtic last January in favour of joining Middlesbrough was back-of-the-fag-packet stuff.
This has been an absolute car crash of a transfer window for the Parkhead side. Without any question, it has been the worst period of recruitment the club has overseen across the last 25 years.
You can take it as far back as Kyogo Furuhashi leaving to join Rennes in January. He was never adequately replaced. Neither was Nicolas Kuhn when he left for Como at the start of the summer.
Adam Idah was effectively sold to Swansea without Rodgers’ consent, given the manager’s insistence that no deal would be sanctioned without a replacement coming in the door first.
It’s amateur hour. In the space of six months, Celtic have gone from making tangible progress in the Champions League to taking ten steps backwards.
With a Europa League campaign now only around the corner, and a fanbase who are utterly disillusioned by the club’s lack of ambition, we are now back in the dark days witnessed under Ronny Deila.
The club will struggle to sell all of their tickets for the European games. It’s not difficult to envisage a repeat of the top tier of Parkhead being closed for the second-tier competition, as was the case under Deila.
Celtic have gone back to the days of scraping the biscuit tin, to shopping in the bargain basement for duds like Carlton Cole and Colin Kazim-Richards.
The Celtic fans have been left furious by the lack of quality signings over the summer
After pushing Bayern so close in the Champions League in February, Rodgers said: ‘My unswerving plan is to make this a seasoned club at this level, where we can go and really hurt big opponents like Bayern Munich.’
They are now a million miles away from that. When you strip away the glitz and glamour of Champions League football, Celtic hold no more appeal to players than the Charltons and Wrexhams of this world.
They have delusions of grandeur about still being a big club at European level. The truth of the matter is that Celtic are an institution crippled by complacency and a lack of ambition.
That mindset comes right from the very top – and Dermot Desmond. Perhaps the major shareholder knew all along that Rodgers would not renew his contract.
Perhaps he knew the manager would leave at the end of the season come what may. With no Champions League football, there’s no point in investing big for a manager who will be away next summer.
Despite such depleted resources in the squad, perhaps Desmond believes that Rodgers will still win the league with one hand tied behind his back against a dreadful Rangers team.
That in itself is a complacent mentality. All this has achieved is to rubber-stamp Rodgers’ exit from the club. Whether that’s at the end of the season, or whether he quits and walks away, time will tell.
The most embarrassing thing of all for Celtic should be the fact that some Rangers fans suddenly believe there could be a title race again. Even Hearts are daring to dream.
It remains to be seen if Rangers will now be able to muster a title challenge to Celtic
What Rodgers wants, compared to what the club are willing to give him, is miles apart. As a marriage, they are totally incompatible.
It’s not about Rodgers having full control. It’s about the club and the manager being aligned to a progressive, forward-thinking, pro-active recruitment strategy.
The disconnect between the manager and the hierarchy is now greater than ever, even if Rodgers has chosen to be fairly diplomatic about it all up until now.
Heads should roll for this. It won’t be Desmond’s or chairman Peter Lawwell’s. Chief executive Michael Nicholson? Unlikely.
No, with the fans baying for blood, the most likely sacrificial lamb will be Paul Tisdale, the club’s head of football operations.
Even that wouldn’t change much. The biggest problem at Celtic is not the manager nor the head of recruitment.
It’s the culture of complacency that has been created over the past 15 years or so.
