There is a sense of frustration growing within the Celtic fan base about the lack of real transfer activity at the club.
Heading towards Celtic’s first fixture of the new season, Brendan Rodgers is yet to replace Kyogo Furuhashi, Nicolas Kuhn or even get in reinforcements for the injured Jota.
With the Champions League qualifier a matter of mere weeks away now, some supporters are looking nervously at the Celtic first-team squad and wondering if Rodgers has enough to negotiate what has proven to be tricky European fixtures for Celtic in the past.
Whilst Celtic have brought in Benjamin Nygren (who looks impressive), Shin Yamada and Hayato Inamura, it cannot be denied that with less than six days to go before the new season kicks off, Celtic are weaker now than how they ended last season.
This makes Andy Halliday’s transfer comments all the more bizarre, proving he has no real clue about how Celtic fans are feeling this summer.
Andy Halliday can’t ‘get on board’ with Celtic fans’ transfer frustrations
Halliday was speaking about Celtic’s transfer model and how it’s been so successful over the last two decades.
Even though the club have reaped in tens of millions since January, Celtic have barely spent a penny this summer and Halliday says he can’t understand why the Hoops support are unhappy about it.
Halliday told Superscoreboard, “I’ve never been quite on board with the discontent for Celtic fans in terms of enough spend.
Now I’m not saying for a minute that Celtic shouldn’t go and spend big on players if they feel as if they’re the right fit, but I just think that that model that Celtic have had has been so successful for such a long period of time.
“Now that’s not to say that if there’s a player out there that really won, i.e. like Kvistgaarden, and his transfer quota is £7.5m, if Celtic want him that bad and they’ve got the money, they should go in and get him.
“I don’t think they should then penny pinch over a million or two and then get left towards the end of the window before you’re trying to sign somebody else. I don’t disagree with that at all.”
Halliday thinks Celtic may have found ‘the next Matt O’Riley’
Despite the relatively small transfer spend, Halliday thinks that Celtic might have signed the next Matt O’Riley with one of their transfer signings.
Halliday continued, “We had a caller earlier on in the show that talked about how Nygren already looks as if they’ve found another gem within him.
“He only cost Celtic £2m. He could be the next Matt O’Reilly that we’ve been speaking about.
“But a lot of it, I think that you have to almost refrain judgment from now towards what’s going to happen at Celtic at the end of the window.
“But I can’t disagree that I’ve been really surprised at how slow it’s been so far.”
Celtic fans are not wanting the club to overspend in the transfer market. What Halliday is failing to grasp is the seemingly penny pinching attitude when it comes to paying what other clubs value their players at.
With Go Ahead Eagles rejecting Celtic’s bid for Jakob Breum, bidding less than half of what the Dutch club value the young Dane at is frustrating the fans.
It’s not about spending big that annoys Celtic fans, it’s about not spending on players when it matters and that is why Halliday has not got a clue about how many Parkhead supporters are feeling.
