Celtic may have transformed from the fragile, cash-strapped institution of the early 1990s into Scottish football’s dominant financial force, but some instincts have proved stubbornly difficult to shake.
For all the occasional headline-grabbing transfer splashes on marquee signings in the modern era, the club’s decision-makers have often found themselves drawn back towards the discount shelf, as if the old biscuit-tin mentality never fully disappeared.
There have, of course, been notable successes. Deals like the one that brought Matt O’Riley to Glasgow for a modest fee before his value soared are exactly the kind of smart recruitment every club dreams of. The danger comes when that exception starts to look like a reliable transfer strategy.
Too often, the result has been an overstocked squad filled with players who contribute little, while significant money disappears into salaries for footballers who never move the needle. It is the familiar lesson of trying to buy cheaply and ending up paying for it twice.
That frustration has long simmered among Celtic supporters, many of whom struggle to understand why a club with such healthy finances cannot consistently spend proper money on three or four proven, high-calibre signings in each summer transfer window.
German midfielder Mika Baur became the latest major-money signing to arrive at Lennoxtown this week
Concerns over recruitment were only intensified by the mid-season appointment of Wilfried Nancy, a move that helped push sections of the support towards open revolt.
Whether those protests directly influenced a noticeably different transfer approach from the Celtic hierarchy this summer is impossible to prove with certainty.
What we do know is that Camilo Duran cost £5.5million from Qarabag. Kasper Hogh was a record £11m from Bodo/Glimt. And just as the grumbles were heard again about the glacial pace at which Celtic do business, here’s Haissem Hassan for an initial £6m from Real Oviedo and Mika Baur, who’s come in from Paderborn for a minimum of £4.5m.
Has the biscuit tin metaphorically been thrown into the Clyde at long last? Or has it just been put into storage?
Given that Yamada arrived for comparative buttons a year after Celtic twice broke its transfer record to sign Adam Idah and Arne Engels, it might be prudent not to rush to judgment, but it does feel like there’s a change of direction.
Asked if he hoped that this summer would become the way of things, Martin O’Neill, for one, is eternally hopeful.
‘I think if you’re talking about quantity, there’s a lot of players out there at this minute,’ he said. ‘Any football manager would say to you, you’d love to have the players in almost the day that you arrived at the football club.
‘That wasn’t going to happen. We had some negotiations to do and all that type of stuff.
‘Overall, I think that the message was trying to get quality in. I think or I am hoping that the four players will show there is more quality in the side. But we have lost Arne (Engels) and that is difficult for us at this minute to immediately replace.
‘We have a number of players who have left the football club. Hopefully, we can get one or two more in.
Haissem Hassan (centre) and Camilo Duran (left) have added to Celtic’s attacking options
‘Even if we get knocked out of the Champions League, we are still in the Europa League. Those games are going to take their toll.’
O’Neill was a picture of health yesterday as he returned to his full media duties at Lennoxtown a week on from being discharged from hospital following a minor procedure.
Reluctant to throw himself straight back in last weekend, he viewed Celtic’s canter at Rugby Park from the safety of his armchair.
‘I watched it in the hotel room,’ he explained. ‘I’m ensconced there at this moment, but I’m hoping to move out.
‘A lot of this had to do with my wife doing some sort of classes down in London at the time (last season) and we couldn’t move because she was totally tied into them.
‘So, I think that she’s just going to postpone things now for a while and be up here.’
With his side scoring five goals going on anything you like against Killie, you could have been forgiven for believing it would have been the perfect pick-me-up.
‘After the second goal, I thought, “We’re in decent shape here”,’ O’Neill recalled. ‘But I don’t know. I don’t really get calm.
‘Honestly, you’re still kicking every ball. Because it’s your team, you’re looking at it from the normal perspective, as I would do.
‘Let’s say, the Championship starts and you get the chance to watch Wolves. I wouldn’t watch that from a managerial viewpoint at all.
Frontman Kasper Hogh is already up and running after netting a hat-trick at Kilmarnock
‘After 10 minutes of Mark Fotheringham saying Wolves are playing 4-3-3, I wouldn’t know. I might not even know throughout the 90 minutes. I’m just watching them for the sake of watching.’
It was probably no bad thing that the game in question didn’t take place at Tannadice. Celtic were woeful when they lost there under Nancy last season and were not a great deal better when they returned with O’Neill at the helm.
‘Yeah, we were really poor that day,’ O’Neill recalled of a wounding loss that appeared to leave their title dream in tatters. ‘Leaving the pitch out from it, we were really poor, didn’t create anything.
‘We had two chances. Kieran Tierney had one over the bar. And the other one was (Kelechi) Iheanacho, where he actually started the game.
‘Outside that, we created nothing in the game. We deserved to lose the match. Honestly, it was a long way back.
‘I know we said in the dressing room that we’d have to win every game, which was seven matches. Deep in my heart, I was hoping that maybe we might be able to afford to draw one of the games. As it turns out, we couldn’t.’
That now feels like a lifetime ago. As we now know, Celtic won seven league games on the spin to win the title.
Including the Scottish Cup semi-final and final and their perfect start to this season, their winning run now stands at 11 games. Ahead of today’s Premier Sports Cup clash, O’Neill, typically, senses danger ahead.
‘The team lost twice away to United last season,’ he said. ‘I thought Dundee United played really well against Rangers in the opening game of the season ,then Hearts hit them a couple of times with really fine goals last week. But no, this will be a difficult game for us.’
