Brendan Rodgers was appointed Celtic manager in the middle of June and since then, the club have went on to sign five players. The hoops’ business has been carried out promptly yet again this summer and a lot of it is down to the behind the scenes recruitment team.
Mark Lawell is the head of recruitment at the champions and does a terrific job. Rodgers recently praised him and spoke about the procedure that is in place for signing a player at Celtic. He said (Sky Sports):”The players that have come in over the past couple of years, Mark Lawell, who is the head of the recruitment team here has done a fantastic job. He’s got a very good team of people behind him so I trust in their work. Some of those players were identified before I came in so it was about giving the blessing and some of them have been identified while I’ve been in.”
It is refreshing that regarding recruitment, Celtic have a modern and effective system in place. In this day and age, next to no managers will play a huge part in identifying players to sign although they do like to spend big. This is not something that will be done by Rodgers and Celtic this window: “We want to improve the squad. I think everyone looks and thinks we’re going to bring in a 15-20 million pound player now the reality is that won’t be the case. There’s still quite a way to go in the window so we’ll look to improve the squad again and continue with that.”
We already know that the Irishman is keen to add to his squad before the end of the summer. It will be somewhat disappointing for supporters that extravagant amounts of money won’t be spent but the club’s strategy of buying young and cheap and selling on for major profit will not alter any time soon.
That does not mean quality won’t be brought in, though. As we’ve seen, some of the best players the club have signed in recent years, such as Reo Hatate and Kyogo, have not broken the bank in terms of transfer fees. It would be encouraging if some money was spent but as Rodgers said, shelling out upwards of 15 million pounds on a player is unrealistic, at least in his view.
