Actually bored ourselves into making
If you think or believe for a second that the only thing stopping Celtic getting our defender targets signed was that the club refused to pay well simply thats not true. Take castagne, he was interested but also interested in other opportunities but either way Atalanta had the final word and said no , not for sale right now at any point. Same story for the Norwegian at olympiakos the club unwilling to sell at that time. It's my understanding that Celtic offered decent money enough that it turned the heads of players and clubs but ultimately the club decide first then the player, if the players under contract. You can throw numbers left right and forward but there's always more to it than simply the cost of a player. The January window isn't a great time to recruit clubs are sniffing out the trophies and want to keep their squad together for the run in. To simply say that we should or could have sold boyata for 10mill and bought 2 decent ones, where's the guarantee once we've sold boyata we get the 2 in ? There's none. We were active in that window for defenders money alone guarantees nothing. You say the same team made the cl so should have been there again but remember that another round was added for us to negotiate. The bhoys that got us as far as they did, playing before the season started did a decent job of it to get us to the Europa 32 for the 2nd time running. Dont care what anyone says they did well.
Once we were eliminated by AEK, the team indeed performed well As Constituted. But it should have been better constituted and that is on Lawwell more than the sleekit one.
the extra round added was the first round where the weakest opposition exists. Not the fourth round, where you are likely to find the toughest opposition........the extra round issue should be no problem for a team that is deep enough to win trebles in scotland..essentially the first month of qualifiers in july before the league commences means we play one game a week during that time. the first two rounds are against weaker sides because we are seeded and the load is not great. if we werent playing those games we would be playing friendlies anyway to get in shape after the layoff. the third and fourth are vs better sides and take place in august when the spl schedule means we play 2 per week with the qualifiers included..but we have to play those every year anyway and the opposition teams are the same degree of difficulty to navigate every year regardless......so adding two first round games in july is not significant in considering the difficulty of qualifying. in fact it might get us in better shape for august than friendlies would, actually helping rather than hurting...
as to defenders, you mentioned two, both of whom are right backs that we considered in january not central defenders we were or should have been looking at in june..but looking at the january window: in all of europe there were only two we could find? no. but they got mentioned. wonder why?
Neither of those two right backs were pursued in the summer but only in january 2019, AFTER we lost the CL qualifiers so there is no direct analogy to the need for cd we had in the summer, as i said above...and going after a guy who is getting first time reps in serie a for a decent team is not a high percentage move anyway. neither is going after Olympiakos CAPTAIN when they are in a fight with AEK for the runnerup position in the Greek league which qualifies them for the CL playoffs. Third and they miss out... . Neither of those were happening. Ever.....They were low percentage moves, and my guess is details were leaked by Lawwell precisely to show that he was "trying very hard" According to the Celtic Star, Celtic waited too late to show its hand and Atalanta in particular wasnt going to sell because they had no replacement. Last minute offers rarely succeed unless they are stupid bad. Last minute deals are rarely the best. You are guaranteed to overpay and we are often vulnerable to the other side....losing an irreplaceable player late.
in actuality there were several names said to be on offer and in the pot last summer and several were discarded because celtic didnt like the price, which wasnt north of 7mm to my recollection...those are the relevant examples not the two showpiece no hopers leaked to show "how hard we are trying". those are obvious put up jobs.
and what i said was we should have bought another defender BEFORE July. We knew in January we were weak there and getting weaker through the spring [we knew after 2016-17 to be accurate]. With proper full time scouting we should have had a list far longer than one or two players long and worked to get at least one of them in BEFORE july, which is when Boyata had his hissy fit. BTW there were several names on offer at the time but they were at that 7mm level and we wanted 3. Once one was in the door we could have told Boyata that we would hold an auction during july and august and sell him after the qualifiers once we were in Europe or once we had bought back number 2 . remember we had fulham on 9mm by july 1...and they wanted him by August 9 because thats when the EPL window closes . As soon as we had back 2 in the door we sell Boyata...worst case. I would guess that bids outside the epl might have surfaced if we set up the auction properly.
meanwhile we look for a second cb through the break. bottom line, because we were dealing from need we likely wouldnt have gotten rock bottom best price, but that is the cost of doing business. The impression i get is that we always hold out for rock bottom price and therefore miss out on a lot. As the mcginn negotiation was held in public, which was not what we wanted or normally do but was a function of hibs putting on a show, it gave a good window on our negotiation tactics, which were risible, quite frankly. the way we treated the mcginn transaction made scrooge look good by comparison.
Being a hard bargainer is a very good discipline to have but when you need a result you have to be flexible and realistic enough to adjust. Any time you lose a 2.7mm pound deal for 200,000 pounds [7pct] in this day and age you have to look in the mirror. We show no signs of having that flexibility and get caught short as a result. Last summer being cheap and unwilling to look ahead cost us big
