I saw a rather amusing tweet yesterday that proposed a new twist on that reality TV show where a rich person and a poor person swap places for a week.
Instead, it would be a Celtic fan swapping places with a fan of a diddy club for the last week of the transfer window, to see if they could hack it without their head spinning off.
That’s not to say though that having seen such riches, Celtic fans should live with being poor. Or put simply, having had a striker of the calibre of Kyogo Furuhashi, that they aren’t right to expect – or even, demand – a replacement of similar standing.
The transfer window rather rumbles into view at Celtic each season like that one guy everyone knows who would start a rammy in an empty house. On the surface, there’s no reason for a stooshie. Everything seems calm. Then before you know it, people are tearing strips off one another.
As the January edition closed on Monday night, Celtic sat 10 points clear at the top of the league with a game in hand, had the League Cup tucked into the trophy cabinet, a Champions League playoff phase tie against Bayern Munich to look forward to having successfully negotiated the league phase of the competition, and more money than God.
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All this is still true. Well, apart from the fact they won their game in hand 6-0, and are now 13 points clear. But it is that last point that is the pertinent one in the context of the window - because they are also absolutely minted, but minus one top-class striker.
Kyogo’s departure had been in the works for months. Manager Brendan Rodgers publicly and repeatedly stated that they had to bring in a replacement. He seemed relaxed that the club would deliver. That plans were in place. He said it again as recently as Sunday evening, they simply had to sign a striker.
Then, they didn’t.
It left one unsure of what to expect when rolling up to Rodgers’ press conference on Tuesday. In days of old, during his first spell in charge of the club, this may have been just cause for open civil warfare. The manager had seemingly been left spinning in the wind by his board, and the sights would likely be trained on them as a result.
Maybe through time or experience, or a recognition that his position was not as strong second time around, Rodgers has consistently struck an altogether more magnanimous tone since returning to Glasgow - on a range of issues.
Certainly from the fans’ point of view, if not from that of Rodgers, the optics of it all are that the board have effectively waved the white flag ahead of the Bayern Munich tie, and that they are happy enough to settle for being ahead of Rangers domestically.
Going into the first leg of that mammoth task against the Germans with Idah as the only recognised senior striker leaves open the very real possibility that Johnny Kenny – no disrespect – may well be going up against the likes of Dayot Upamecano and Kim Min-jae for a good portion of it.
Given the disparity in finances, Celtic may well have been taking a knife to a gun fight even if they did manage to bring another striker in. But now? They are running the risk of taking a water pistol in that striking position.
Rodgers though, struck a diplomatic tone. Was there irritation under the polished veneer? You can bet your last pound on it. But he seems to have waved something of a white flag of his own, realising there is little to be gained by airing his grievances, and the club’s dirty linen, in public. On the surface, everything was business as usual, and the club were all pulling in the one direction.
In a way, it is a perfectly reasonable stance to take. Rodgers doesn’t want to do anything to risk upsetting an applecart that is bobbing along quite nicely at the moment. But if the fiery vernacular and pointed language towards the board is absent, it leaves you wondering just how Rodgers may eventually express his dissatisfaction.
Playing devil’s advocate for the board (which is normally just a saying, but one which many Celtic fans may take as literal in this case), it’s not like the men upstairs are simply using that cash pile to practice their cannonballs into, or are making snow angels atop it, a la Scrooge McDuck. They have indeed sanctioned a fair bit of spending in recent times.
In fact, they broke their transfer record twice in the space of a fortnight just last summer, bringing in Adam Idah and Arne Engels.
As was mentioned this week on a podcast run by a sportswriter once of this parish (cheque in the post, please Spiersy) it is something of an open secret that those two players being on the bench as Celtic went down 3-0 at Ibrox in January raised an eyebrow or two in the posh seats that day.
Who is to say if the fact that neither Idah nor Engels have become nailed-on starters since their big-money arrivals has made the Celtic board less than keen to sanction another splurge on a forward, but as was once remarked when St Mirren legend Mark Yardley rose for a header, it’s hardly the biggest leap.
What seems more likely in this case though, and what would also explain Rodgers’ reticence to criticise, is that this was a failure of forward planning on the part of the recruitment department, rather than a reluctance to spend money.
Whatever the reason, their recruitment is an area that Celtic need to sort out once again, and pronto. They will have a Champions League qualifier in the summer to contend with, and remarkably, they risk going into it half-baked, as they have done so many times in the past.
Rodgers said on Tuesday that he won’t allow his irritations to ‘kill his joy’ of managing Celtic this time around. But to borrow another phrase of his, if the club are as similarly underprepared for the summer, it seems a matter of time before it will be terminado.
