After the surprise defeat to the Premiership’s bottom side St Johnstone last week, complacency has been a hot topic around Celtic’s Lennoxtown training ground this week.
Manager Brendan Rodgers has been attempting to guard against such a mindset creeping onto the pitch on a regular basis. Their handsome lead at the top of the table has been cited as the main factor in the way that the exceptionally high level they exhibited earlier in the season has rather tailed off since the turn of the year, and certainly since their exit from the Champions League in February.
That drop in standards though has also sparked questions over complacency creeping in at a strategic level within the club, as former Celtic striker Chris Sutton pointed a finger at the club’s board over their January transfer window business. Or lack of it, as it transpired.
The inability, or unwillingness, to fulfil Rodgers’ request for a new striker to replace Kyogo Furuhashi was, in Sutton’s view at least, a clear signal that Celtic’s decision makers had decided that there was no need to spend with the league all but won.
In short, that complacency had set in.
“No, I wouldn't like to say that,” Rodgers said when asked about Sutton’s accusation.
“Listen, everyone will have an opinion on it.
“You know, it was clear. I said at the time we wanted a striker. But if it didn't happen, because we couldn't get the right one, then of course I was happy for Daizen (Maeda) to play there. Because he can do.
“My ambition and the club's ambition will be to always improve and be better, whether it's facilities, whether it's on the field. And we'll look to do that again in the summer.
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“You're assessing every day. You're assessing every day in training. You're assessing people when they play in the Champions League against the domestic. Does it mean more to them in the Champions League or in the domestic league?
“Here, you have to cope with both. Here you have to cope with expectation and you have to cope with being an underdog in the Champions League sometimes. It comes hand in hand. “You can't be brilliant when you're an underdog and when the expectation's there, be no good. So, you deal with both.
“Guys like Callum McGregor, James Forrest, these guys have done it for years here. They go into big games and sometimes they're an underdog, but it means everything to them. But it doesn't change when they come home. They deal with the expectation. “So, that's the level here at Celtic and that's what you're assessing all the time.”
It may well be that Rodgers is assessing who from his current squad will still be around come the first day of pre-season training in the summer over the next few weeks, as he warned his men that he wouldn’t tolerate another performance of the level shown in Perth when Kilmarnock come to Celtic Park tomorrow.
In fact, Rodgers went as far to say that if the playing squad isn’t refreshed in the close season, then the only other option at a club like Celtic is for a fresh voice from the dugout to guide them.
Either way, a change is gonna come, and in his view, it needs to.
“I think it's all about improvement,” he said.
“I think naturally what you have at our club, and you guys will have seen it reporting on the club over many years, there is a natural slide of players that move out and come in every three or four years.
“So, I think naturally that will happen. It's the nature of our model here, but it's also the nature of players being here and maybe either looking to move on or want to come away from the pressure that's here. Because three or four years of it, it's a lot of pressure.
“We always want to improve the team, improve the hunger in the team. That's always key. Because one of the ways to succeed, and guard across what I've been talking about, is you need the freshness.
“It's either that or the manager goes. It's as simple as that. There's no rocket science in it. You cannot be at a club for a long period of time with the same group of players. And likewise, the same group of players need a different voice.
“But at this moment, it'll be about improving the squad.
“I think change is needed. I think that's the point. I think that's that freshness, that new energy coming into your squad that alleviates any of that sort of complacency.
“So, we will bring players in to challenge the squad and the team for the summer. That's natural at any team.
“However this team does at the end of the season, come the end, we want to improve it. Because, like I said, if you just sit on that, then the team needs the competition.
“So, either way, we will look to improve the squad.”
