von Dinamo Baden » Sa 23. Aug 2025, 10:37
Chris Sutton:
The Celtic board can’t say they weren’t warned.
The supporters let their feelings be known the other night after a dismal performance against Kairat Almaty.
And it was blatantly obvious the chickens have come home to roost.
I’ve been saying for weeks this shambles of a transfer window could seriously come back to bite them on the backside.
And yet here we are.
Don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here wearing my I Told You So T-shirt. Believe me, it doesn’t give me any pleasure.
In fact, I can’t actually get my head around how Celtic got themselves into this position.
There are people who claim the Parkhead board is too cautious. I don’t see it that way.
Not when they are taking the biggest gamble of them all by refusing to give Brendan Rodgers the proper tools going into this Champions League play-off.
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. That’s the phrase that came to mind the other night.
It was always going to be a tricky tie no matter who they got at this stage. But failing to replace Kyogo, Jota, and Nicolas Kuhn was a self-inflicted own goal that’s now left them facing the huge task of getting away with it next week in Kazakhstan.
Celtic might still get through. Even with the lack of attacking signings, they could still find a way of squeezing past Kairat.
Yet the job has been made far tougher than it needed to be. It’s mind-boggling how they got here.
I can’t work out if it’s complacency or incompetence, or maybe even arrogance.
Did they think this squad was going to have enough to get through the tie and then they could go out and spend for the group stage?
Did they not see the Scottish Cup Final? Did they fall asleep during the last three Rangers games?
Have they not heard Rodgers talking about taking the club to the next level after pushing Bayern Munich close in February or talking about needing fresh faces after St Johnstone? Obviously not.
For whatever reason, it’s a dereliction of duty.
You can’t say Celtic is not a well-run club given their stability and resources. But supporters have stumped up good money to watch their side in huge numbers.
They deserve for their club to at least attempt to put the best possible team on the pitch.
To have their Champions League fate in the balance when they have tens of millions in the bank is frankly ridiculous.
I felt sorry for Rodgers the other night, and in recent weeks in general. He’s the one who’s had to front up and try to explain the indefensible.
He’s been begging for new signings in the forward areas – and yet look what he was left with the other night.
Rodgers has often said a team is only as strong as the XI that finishes a match, not just the one that starts it.
Well, have a look at what was out there at full-time against Kairat. The board must have seen it too. And this is a year on from them saying lessons had to be learned from last summer’s blundering window.
What’s happened to the so-called football doctor in all of this?
Paul Tisdale came in last October, but either the recruitment department has failed to find the replacements the team needs, or the club failed to get the deals done.
Something isn’t working.
Rodgers’ comments about Hayato Inamura before the game were incredible. If he’s not up to the job, then why was he signed – and by whom?
When you take out Jota and Tierney, it’s like Tisdale’s department is unearthing lots of hidden gems.
The likes of Benjamin Nygren might come good, but that wasn’t an area of the pitch that needed attention anyway.
I’ve got no doubt we’ll be told it’s tough to get players to come to Scotland, or you have to wait to get quality. They might say clubs are holding off on selling until they bring in replacements. Yeah, that is how most of them operate – apart from Celtic.
No, they are happy to flog their best assets without a contingency in place.
A player wants to go? No problem, we’ll take the money.
How about they get sold when it suits the club?
The club would say it would have been a gamble not taking the money, but it’s an even bigger risk when there’s £40 million from the group stage at stake.
All of it is utter nonsense.
It’s Celtic that clearly has an issue, and there’s an obvious disconnect between the board’s thinking and the ambitions of the manager and the support.
On the manager, you can forget about Rodgers signing a new deal. Why would he?
He’s been sent into a Champions League play-off with both arms tied behind his back.
He doesn’t need this grief. He must have looked at his bench the other night and wondered – f*** me, what is the point?
Rodgers had a centre-back at left-back, Daizen Maeda bouncing between the wing and up front, Yang – who Rodgers admitted is only still at the club because no replacement was signed – sent on to try to turn around the game.
He machine-gunned Adam Idah with the decision to hook him at half-time and then took a baseball bat to the board after the game.
He’s not going to stick around any longer than he has to if this is the club’s idea of progress, and his message afterwards was clear.
They’ll have their work cut out in Almaty, that’s for sure. Kairat was a lot stronger than some expected. They were defensively superb, well-organised, and posed a threat.
There were plenty of warning signs from them the other night – but Celtic has become experts at ignoring warning signs, haven’t they?
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It's such a joy for us to see,
For they play football the Celtic way. 
