The Celtic Thread

When asked if he has to green light all transfers, Rodgers said: “Yes. Absolutely. It will come to me in the process. I’ll look at him and see where he’s at and then we decide from there.
“My job is also to protect the club. The club work in a particular way to develop young talents and my job is to assess the talent.

“But when you are managing 60-odd games a season you can’t be a scout as well.
“My job is to coach and manage the players and put them on the field. We have a network of scouts behind that to try to find the players.
“In this case something came up and you make a decision.

“I don’t need to share anything about the internal working of the club. What I said the other night was we were presented with a young player who is a talent.
“He’s a winger. I don’t need a winger now but he’s a talent and if the club sign him then we’ll look at a development plan, whether it’s coming in now or going on loan to play games.
“The deal should be done at the beginning of the week and we’ll go from there.
“I was being honest. I’m not going to say I’ve been tracking the boy for six months. It’s a young talented player and that’s the club’s model, that’s how it works.”
Rodgers admits that his inability to hide his frustrations at times has led to a level of scrutiny being put on the club’s recruitment set-up.
But he reckons the criticism being copped by Congerton - a former colleague of Rodgers at Chelsea recently linked with a move to head up scouting operations at Anderlecht - is unfair.
He added: “I’ve never known a head of recruitment get criticised the way he does.

“And it’s unfair. Whether it was John Park or Lee or whoever, it’s not an easy job being head of recruitment at a club like Celtic.
“Because the expectancy here is to do well not just domestically but in Europe – but you don’t have those resources. There are constraints and there is the finance.
“But, if you look at the likes of Benkovic, that was them. Odsonne is a big talent - one of Lee’s players.
“I remember the likes of Coutinho, Oscar, guys like that he brought into Chelsea. So there’s no doubting his eye for talent is first class.

“The regular supporter wouldn’t know the operation. And when one or two get emotional in the media and start to point fingers, that can snowball.
“It’s easy for people to criticise but he does a great job, he’s very talented. He hasn’t worked in the game for this period of time without having that talent.
“Part of Lee’s job is to find not just players for now, but to find players who are strategic for the club, who can help the club later on.
“He obviously has to scour the market and at this moment in time, in terms of recruitment, it’s probably never been more difficult.

“In terms of not just attracting players to Celtic, but in terms of finance, it’s very, very tough.
“He puts in a lot of miles, a lot of hours and of course the torch gets shone on him. But it’s very unfair because, a lot of the time, he’ll find players we just can’t bring in.
“That is the job of the recruitment officer, unfortunately. They spend many hours travelling and working. And sometimes you aren’t getting that player in.
“I know how it is now, supporters want to see that yellow bar on the TV screen saying Celtic have signed some player, blah, blah and everything is perfect.
“But there’s a lot of tireless work that goes in to looking at players. It’s then, are they available and can we afford them?

“If we can, the club will do the best they can to bring them in.
“Sometimes it will frustrate you because you know what it can give your team when you are after a certain kind of player.
“I probably didn’t hide that so well. I am not so good at hiding my emotions sometimes.

“But you get on with it. You respect the environment you are working in and I think we’ve done ok since I’ve been in terms of developing players and we’ll continue to develop if we don’t get in what we want.
“If there’s any message, it’s the club will do everything they can to get the right type of players who will help the squad.
“If we don’t, we have a strong group of players going in to this part of the season.”

Weah was poor today, didn't get into the game at all and missed a couple of sitters.

Still early days though.

Sinclair was back to his best at times and scored a good header.

Boyata & Benkovic ruled out of the Wednesday game in hand v St J

FFS [:x]

manchesterbhoy wrote: benko out for the season if you believe the h*n  mckenna also out for 6 weeks at dolly there was the replacement

Celtic being linked with Sunderland full back Bryan Oviedo.

Dundee away moved to St Patricks day 1230ko

tonyjaa wrote: Reports in Ukraine & Russia say Maryan Shved is joining Celtic for £2mill He was linked a week or so back He's a right winger so don't know where the feck he's expected to fit in Maybe loaned back to his club until the end of the season and Burkes loan ends? [URL=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryan_Shved]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryan_Shved[/URL]

Signed

He will go back to finish the season on loan

Superb strike from McGregor for the first 

Double Maxim wrote: PanteirA wrote: Superb strike from McGregor for the first          You still going to St Johnstone in the cup bud?

Will do. How about yourself ?