Another discussion point on the excellent Huddle Breakdown chat with Leicester City fan and data analyst Dominic Wells was Brendan Rodgers mixed recruitment record.
There are very few if any managers who get every deal right, and these days, with Directors of Football (official and unofficial) and global scouting networks, and databases galore, it is a whole lot more complicate to attribute blame or credit.
Ultimately the manager carries the can in the eyes of public opinion.
In his initial interview on Celtic TV, Rodgers was fulsome in his praise for Head of Scouting Mark Lawwell and Celtic’s recent recruitment operation. Certainly, under Ange Postecoglou it seems there were more hits than misses.
No such structures existed when Rodgers was at Celtic from 2016 to 2019, and he brought in Lee Congleton to assist him in this regard. The influence CEO Peter Lawwell held over player trading is an open conversation amongst many Celtic supporters. So, again, not straightforward. In yesterdays fan presser he said that last time around responsibilities were “confused”.
Let’s remind ourselves what Rodgers’s market moves were in his last tenure.
End of 2015-16
Ronnie Deila left Rodgers with the following first team squad:
With Charlie Mulgrew and Anthony Stokes leaving the club that summer at the expiration of their contracts, the left back and striking positions were particularly thin on talent but high on numbers.
James Forrest would sign a new three-year contract and Paddy Roberts was on loan for a further year.
At this stage, Stuart Armstrong and Callum McGregor were considered wide players and Ryan Christie a project. Kris Ajer was on loan at IK Start and was still considered a 16-year-old midfielder at this stage.
Deila had relied upon Stefan Johansen and Kris Commons for midfield craft and goals.
2016-17
In that initial season, Rodgers managed to trim that underwhelming forward line but without generating the large transfer income the player trading model demands:
On the recruitment front, there is much debate around the extent to which Rodgers was involved in sourcing Moussa Dembele. Also, Kris Ajer had been a Deila signing and had been left on loan in Norway until Rodgers took over.
His overall signings were:
A modest net outlay of around £6m with the signature singing that of Scott Sinclair for a bargain £3.5m.
Dembele was a massive coup for the club. In addition, the much-decorated Kolo Toure was brought in to provide mature quality to central defence, and major money was spent on Eboue Kouassi, very much the archetypal Rodgers power and pace central midfielder.
Christian Gamboa was seen to be adding pace to the right back area. Dorius De Vries was considered a better ball playing goalkeeper than Craig Gordon.
Of those, only Sinclair was unequivocally a Rodgers signing and a standout success. But at least he got the biggest money signing right! None of the outgoings were regrettable other than there wasn’t the churn needed to keep feeding income into the transfer model.
2017-18
After the Invincible Treble, one might have thought Rodgers had earned a certain level of backing for another upcoming Champions League campaign.
As a response to such a successful season, the dealings were underwhelming.
The signature signing was a relatively untried Olivier Ntcham from Manchester City, who would prove to be a good player for Celtic in the main.
Jonny Hayes promised to bring more pace to the team off the back of a great season at Aberdeen. Hayes was solid enough, but this smacked of weakening your nearest challenger by taking their best player – a Rangers 1990s trick.
Marvin Compper is one of the great Celtic transfer failures – a ball playing centre back who lasted barely one appearance.
Otherwise, there were youngsters of promise (Kundai Benyu, Leo Mazis, Lewis Morgan and Jack Hendry). Promises that failed to materialise.
The loan market was utilised smartly to try Odsonne Edouard before buying. Roberts was again brought in for a season that would prove injury hit. Scott Bain joined in loan from January to May as did Charlie Musonda junior, a very highly rated but ultimately expensive loan fail from Chelsea.
All in all, a very mixed and poor response to such an incredible season before. But again, at least the statement signings, Ntcham and Edouard, would largely bear fruit.
Outgoings:
Celtic made a small net profit on transfers in/out only because of the sell on fee received from Southampton following the then world record transfer of Virgil Van Dijk to Liverpool.
There was poor asset management in two players retiring and another two leaving for no fee. A big hit was taken on the sale of Gary Mackay-Steven. Given Saidy Janko’s subsequent solid career, the small fee received for him seems an opportunity lost.
Celtic relatively poor asset management is well exemplified in this window.
2018-19
With tensions evident within the club over the treatment and potential sales of Dedryck Boyata and Moussa Dembele, the end of Rodgers reign came in the 18/19 season.
In terms of investment on the back of anther treble:
Edouard’s capture for a club record fee was certainly a statement of support for the manager.
Bain turned his loan into a full-time deal but that was basically that.
Incredibly Emilio Izaguirre was resigned following the injury to Kieran Tierney in a cut price replacement sticking plaster of a strategy.
Then it got weird in the January window. The arrangements for Americans Andrew Gutman and Manny Perez were shrouded in mystery – did they even have visas to play in the UK? They never did.
Marian Shved was he of the famous “millions of wingers”, a comment Rodgers made weeks before he was gone. Signings were been made the manager did not want.
Vakoun Bayo never fitted in and has bounced around clubs since. Another £2m mystery. Mulumbu from Kilmarnock seemed another cut price sticking plaster to the need for a box-to-box midfielder.
Bewildering.
In terms of outgoings:
Another treble beckoned but overall, around £16m was brought in from player trading.
Dembele finally got his big move, and Stuart Armstrong was at least a player trading success making a profit for the club in joining Southampton.
The Sviatchenko and Ciftci departures was low ball clearing out of the unwanted.
What should happen is that there needs to be more trading – higher turnover – and the club should sell the Dembele’s readily at top dollar with their replacement already lined up.
Summary
Celtic hit the jackpot with the big money signings during Rodgers’s time in that Sinclair, Dembele, Eduard and Ntcham all contributed to the first team in a significant way.
Overall, though, this was a period where players were poorly asset managed, contracts run down, and players sold well below peak market value.
Much money was wasted on poorly fitting young prospects and limited but cheap experience with 0 resale.
Given three trebles were won and two Champions League campaigns were fought, the overall net spend was £24.5m and £46m was brought in through sales. But the churn was too low and not enough invested in the squad to accelerate the turnover of revenue. In 2021-22 Celtic’s incomings and outgoings matched the numbers over the whole of Rodgers’ reign.
How much of the 2016-19 transfer performance was down to Rodgers is the big question.
I posit not all, and that this was a complicated time for Celtic in terms of transfer trading roles and responsibilities.
What is for sure is that, with the hindsight of what an effective player trading model should look like, this was not it.
And that is on the whole club.
Hopefully, this time, the structures, roles and responsibilities are stronger and better aligned to modern football. No more confusion – Rodgers seems confident that will indeed be the case.
My overwhelming impression at the time, and which remains, is that Rodgers was really well backed ahead of and throughout the second campaign in 2017/18. Ntcham, Edouard, Roberts, Hayes and Musonda all seemed very much to be Rodgers-driven acquisitions. Hayes was an early signing he publicly waxed lyrical about having worked with him before (though his use was always going to be contingent on whether or not they could re-secure Roberts, who City seemed reluctant to let go back to Celtic and to have no interest in selling at the time). I think it’s also really important to remember that NO significant players from the 2016/17 campaign were sold, which I found amazing at the time (we should have sold Dembele then).
The real problems came the following summer.
This second (83 point) season probably exposed a few things though:
1. The club’s scouting network and recruitment structures were not good.
2. Just relying on personal Rodgers targets (or the targets of a particular manager) were as likely to be as hit or miss as anything else. This just makes sense. There is no football manager anywhere with the time or wherewithal to scout and analyse all possible targets himself.
Roberts’ services were re-secured at great expense with no re-sale value. He was injured for most of that season. Musonda made two good passes against Hearts and Zenit but wasn’t a good football player (now and then I do something class at the fives; doesn’t make me class). Hayes was workmanlike (not sure if weakening an opponent you’ve just beaten six times in a season was a rational motivation, if indeed it was one).
I suspect that Rodgers’ frustrations tended toward the first point, the then CEO’s frustrations will have tended towards the second. The problem was an amalgamation of the two, and we must hope that the structures in place now are stronger than that (the noises coming out of the club sound like good ones: well done Ange, well done Michael Nicholson, well done Mark Lawwell, if so).
Also, shit-stirring side-bet if anyone’s up for it?
I strongly suspect that Celtic’s penalty deficit will be far closer to Rangers’ in the season ahead.
I’m not so sure that the penalty deficit balance will be so much in Celtic’s favour in comparison to Rangers – as it was in Rodgers’ two previous full seasons in charge – given the relative strength of Rangers now compared to then, but I’m confident it will be much closer.
The season on season pattern of Scottish referees booking Rangers players far more often than they book Celtic players (+19 for the season just behind us, which is typical of the seven previous seasons, with the exception of 20/21, where there was one in it) is likely to continue.
Alan, I very much enjoyed the Kieran McGuire discussion. How did you feel about his thoughts on Celtic’s lack of ambition when Rangers were in the lower leagues? It certainly rings true in a sense, but the only hard suggestion was that the stadium could have been expanded. This would have taken one hell of an ambition to pull off. Season ticket sales plummeted at that time, to the point where the top of the Lisbon Lions stand was permanently closed. Indeed, all remaining season ticket holders were given a £100 per season discount throughout that four year period, such was the shakiness of the demand. It might now seem sensible that the stadium should have been expanded at that point, but at the time that would have been one almighty gamble.
My own feeling is that Celtic getting much further beyond Rangers than we are at the moment is a bit fanciful, given Rangers’ inbuilt advantage over the remainder of the league. That kind of seemed to be what McGuire was driving at too. We really just need to make sure we win the league at all costs this season: Rangers getting automatic entry into the expanded CL probably would be a longer-term leveller?
But, the general discussion was very good. Indeed, it prompted me to check out the Doncaster interview on the Price of Football pod. I thought that Doncaster came across very well. The only question I thought he was unconvincing with was the one you sent in. Have you any thoughts on his response?
I DO think we could have made serious progress in terms of a proper restructuring of the football and academy operations at that point. Just not so sure about the stadium or the commercials.
I am in agreement. 2023 Martin wishes we had rebuilt the main stand and we would be even better placed, but 2012/2015 Martin sat watching games ashamed that the rest of the country (rightly) mocked our banner seats. The board would’ve been utterly mad or wonderfully prophetic had they embarked on building works. The irony is of course that it is now nigh on impossible, as even if we got it done in only one season, that season we would lose our advantage and the margins are so slim given the gulf even to 3rd place club, we simply can’t.
Exactly my thinking. It seems quite a stretch as a counterfactual. Much as I was glad to have saved £100 a year back then, the club really didn’t seem in any position to put the foot down. Attendances were way down.