The board

[kelly]

Dembles agent would only sanction his transfer if it was to a team who wou;ld deveope him , plays in the champions league and would not hinder his French international staues

Lyon matched this and matched the release clause and this was all brought about after someone tryd to get him to move to Brighton

 

[BenLynch29]

We did have a plan b but we also had a manager who was whoring himself out for hire at the time or did you miss that part

I don’t see any evidence of a plan B, much less a plan A, regarding Boyata, and that’s a big part of the problem. And yes, BR’s conduct that summer was part of the problem, and I don’t think anyone can deny that. But our failure that summer to sign one, much less the required two, CB’s is a major problem. We ended up scrambling to get Benkovic on loan on the last day because we had cocked up the transfer window so badly. I mean, did we even make any formal offers to permanently sign a single CB that window??? Had Plan A or Plan B actually come to fruition, we would have been able to sell Boyata and secure a replacement at some point in the window.

One thing is certain though: having a qualified DoF on the staff who can go into each transfer window with an actual plan of who’s going (and at what price), who’s staying, and who’s coming in (and at what price) is badly needed. That doesn’t mean the plan never changes or that it gets executed perfectly, but it’s pretty damn clear we haven’t had a functioning plan in well over a year. Other clubs, both big and small, have managed to do this for years. There’s a lot of blame that could be cast around our club for its failure to proactively address this issue before now, but the board and PL ought to be applauded for finally addressing it!

 

[TET]

I don’t see any evidence of a plan B, much less a plan A, regarding Boyata, and that’s a big part of the problem. And yes, BR’s conduct that summer was part of the problem, and I don’t think anyone can deny that. But our failure that summer to sign one, much less the required two, CB’s is a major problem. We ended up scrambling to get Benkovic on loan on the last day because we had cocked up the transfer window so badly. I mean, did we even make any formal offers to permanently sign a single CB that window??? Had Plan A or Plan B actually come to fruition, we would have been able to sell Boyata and secure a replacement at some point in the window.

One thing is certain though: having a qualified DoF on the staff who can go into each transfer window with an actual plan of who’s going (and at what price), who’s staying, and who’s coming in (and at what price) is badly needed. That doesn’t mean the plan never changes or that it gets executed perfectly, but it’s pretty damn clear we haven’t had a functioning plan in well over a year. Other clubs, both big and small, have managed to do this for years. There’s a lot of blame that could be cast around our club for its failure to proactively address this issue before now, but the board and PL ought to be applauded for finally addressing it!

With hindsight on Rodgers im glad the club blocked permanent transfers.

We signed both Hendry and Compper as CB
We had simonovic and ajer boyata already at CB
Lustig and Bitton capable of playing at CB
And we loaned benkovic.

Most of thes players are recurring injuries?

Why do we have these players on the books if we need two better CBs?

Lustig is Swedish highly rated RB on huge wages relative at celtic
Gamboa bought by Rodgers
RAlston coming through at RB

Should we really have had 8 cbs and 4 rbs at club?

 

[BenLynch29]

Your structure and points are well off the beam

We had a third striker at that moment we also had 2 days left of the window

You actually think you can just send a player out on loan ? ffs he needs to agree to go you can't make him

Benkovic entirley diffrent , bought by a millionaire club awash with EPL money he was stock piled to sell on

we will never be in this position

We play in the spfl ,and your trying to compare us shopping with the likes of Spurs ,Madrid and Liverpool that senario would never ever happen it is hard enough to try and attract players and good ones at that
where as the EPL can throw money at any player and not play them

we will never be in that position

For strikers we had Dembele, Griff, and Eddie. If the plan was to sell Dembele (and clearly it wasn’t despite BR supposedly telling him earlier that summer that he should go to a better club/league), then ipso facto we need to bring in another striker to have the full contingent. Waiting until the last minute to even make a bid on someone is a bad way to go about your transfer business when you’re expecting (or should be realistically expecting) one of your players to walk out the door. It’s poor planning in the extreme. At a minimum transfer targets should have been identified and asking prices from the the targets’ current club should have been known well in advance. In fact, that’s actually something that should be done on a regular basis for every position in the squad regardless if for no other reason than contingency planning.

Benkovic was brought in to be a 1st team player at Leicester. They brought him in early anticipating that someone else would leave. When that didn’t happen, they were honest with him and suggested he go out on loan to get some playing time. Nothing wrong with this, and he will go back to Leicester this summer and cement his place in the squad.

And regarding Spurs, Liverpool, and other clubs... the point I was trying to make was regarding the basic operation of the club and how they do their transfer business. The number of zeros attached to the transfer targets - both buying and selling - doesn’t impact the overall planning process or fundamental strategy in terms of how they go about their business. The money just gives them more to spend on better quality, but the process would be the same with 1/10 the money. Also, with the Bale situation at Spurs, at the time they were perennially in the 5th-8th range in the EPL along with Everton and a couple other clubs. They were not the heavyweights they are now, and they actually moved up the proverbial food chain by following their transfer plans and securing £90m for the sale of Bale. They bought 1/2 a squad with that money, including several little known players who are 1st team stars, and they brought them in before the Bale sale was finalized. They got a 21 year old Lamella for £27m; a 21 year old Ericsson for £12m; Roberto Soldado for £27; Chadli for £7m; Paulinho for £17m, and Chiriches for £7m.

The following year they sold off Sigurdsson to Swansea for £9m, but not before securing the signings of a then-unknown 18 year old Deli Alli for £6m and 20 year old Eric Dier for £4.5m.

Spurs have a very good DoF. He works with the scouts to identify targets ahead of time, and then he works with management and the players to figure out who’s coming and who’s going. There’s no animosity or drama, and they get things done. And whether they’re replacing a £9m Sigurdsson or a £90m Bale, the process is the same and everybody including the manager and the players involved are on the same page before the transfer window opens up.

Celtic as a club desperately need someone to fill that role and be much more proactive in transfer planning and squad development. As I said elsewhere, a lot of blame can be cast for our failures in the transfer market the last 12-24 months, but those failures reinforce the need to hire a DoF more than anything.

 

[BenLynch29]

With hindsight on Rodgers im glad the club blocked permanent transfers.

We signed both Hendry and Compper as CB
We had simonovic and ajer boyata already at CB
Lustig and Bitton capable of playing at CB
And we loaned benkovic.

Most of thes players are recurring injuries?

Why do we have these players on the books if we need two better CBs?

Lustig is Swedish highly rated RB on huge wages relative at celtic
Gamboa bought by Rodgers
RAlston coming through at RB

Should we really have had 8 cbs and 4 rbs at club?

That’s a fair question and a fair point at the end TET.

But for me the ultimate answer boils down to whether or not a player is expendable in the sense that we can get on with the season without said player. At least with regards to Boyata, we were in a pickle. Benkovic hadn’t shown up yet; We needed Lustig at RB; Compper was known to be a dud by that point; Bitton was out with a long term injury; so that left us with Boyata, Ajer, Simunovic, and Hendry (was he in the door at that point? I don’t remember...). So 4 total available CB’s at that point in the season available for selection including Boyata. Under that lens, Boyata was not expendable because a single injury to any of the other 4 would have seen us down to 2 available CB’s had we accepted Fulham’s offer (and I’m assuming Hendry was indeed signed by that point). With 2 matches per week, 3 CB’s is not sufficient.

I can see why BR wouldn’t let him leave as we would have been screwed for the upcoming season had we accepted the offer, also recognizing here that at the time that decision was made, we hadn’t landed Benkovic yet which would have made accepting Fulham’s offer a realistic option.

But the real issue here is that the club, regardless of who you want to assign blame, didn’t plan ahead and put itself in a position where it could accept an offer for Boyata. And given the World Cup he had, it was obvious a big money offer was going to come in for him. Had we planned ahead with a little bit of foresight, the club could have shopped him around while also securing a replacement. Boyata would have been amenable to that as it would have gotten him the move he wanted, and it might have gotten us more than the £9m Fulham offered. But we dithered until it was too late and failed to capitalize on the opportunity. And that’s ignoring the possibility that a replacement would have been sufficient to see us through AEK in the CL qualifiers.