Mea Culpa

Critical Bill helps himself to a large slice of Humble Pie

The legendary Dick Emery had a character with Roy Kinnear whose punchline at the end of the sketch was, ‘I got it wrong again !!’ Well after suggesting that we should look for a Rodgers replacement after the home game against Kilmarnock in February, I must now add it to to my prediction howlers alongside tipping Ange to not having a successful reign as Celtic manager.

It resulted in deserved abuse with “oh, ye of little faith”, “doubting Thomas”, “you don’t half talk s****” and “I effin’ knew we would win the league when you said that” being about the more pleasant ones.  

So my hands are held up and thankfully, I got that one badly wrong.  Brendan Rodgers turned it around and a consistent spell of form saw us win a league and cup double.   It felt considerably sweeter given the gloating from Edmonton Drive after the Beaton inspired defeat at Tynecastle, the lap of honour after the 3-3 game (a result that was still far better for us than them) and the likes of David Tanner on social media saying that Rangers winning the league was virtually a  foregone conclusion.

Big players such as McGregor and Carter-Vickers came back and they made a huge difference.  It wasn’t all plain sailing, the semi final at Hampden against Aberdeen, was a poor performance and we scraped by.  There were a few exceptions, where we did fire on all cylinders - away at Rugby Park, with Adam Idah bullying the Kilmarnock defence.  But mostly it was enough to get over the line.  None the less, we did it when the likes of myself thought we couldn’t, and the two weeks between the 11th and 25th of May were joyous.

As for Rodgers, you could say he made a rod for his own back with the “see you here in May”, comment but bottom line, he backed it up.  Beating Rangers at Hampden in a Scottish Cup Final for the first time in 35 years also just felt that extra bit special.

There are real lessons to be learned from last season though despite my calling it wrong about the manager.  Recruitment last year was awful.  After a bevvy of players being signed, a majority will likely be away within a year from now  Assuming we re-sign Bernardo and Idah (no inside info, if we will), of the remainder - at the moment - Kuhn has a future at the club.  Yang can progress if he toughens up.  Holm clearly has to show more in training and be a more disciplined professional otherwise he won’t make it (see Rodgers own comments).  For the rest it’s not looking good.  Kwon will probably be loaned out again, Nawrocki can’t stay fit and Lagerbielke is up for sale and Tillio won’t be back.  Phillips ended up back at Liverpool having lost out to Scales. 

Name a Celtic starting XI tomorrow and most likely none of the above will be on it.  That’s astonishing given the likes of Jota, Mooy, Starfelt and Abada have left.  Now another one of my incorrect forecasts was that nobody would be held accountable for this state of events.  Well Mark Lawwell was.  But as yet he has not been replaced and at this stage in the close season there are concerns about the lack of recruitment.  

As I write this, the goalkeeping position HAS been addressed properly for this season and the future. So given my record over the past 6 months, I’m not sticking my head on the block and prophesying doom.  All I will say is that we have 6 weeks to get a centre back, a left back, a winger, a likely replacement for MOR as well as re-signing Idah and Bernardo.  In addition with Daniel Kelly looking likely to leave the club and if Holm is loaned out, then we will need another midfielder - bearing in my mind Turnbull left in January.  

That’s a lot of work to do in less than a month in a half.  But I do think it is the bare minimum to get us up to speed, squad wise, for a long season ahead.  Let’s just hope this time, we’re not cursing our transfer business come the 2nd of September.