The £17m reason Celtic won't sit still this transfer window as Brendan Rodgers learns painful lesson

Daily Record

2 days ago

Seven years ago the seeds were sown for a brief yet painful decline and Rodgers won't stand for the same this time around
He's the most successful manager in Celtic's recent history – yet there are a few wrongs left to right for Brendan Rodgers.
The Irishman has made it clear his return to the club was driven by his desire to ensure his unsavoury exit in 2019 wasn't his enduring Parkhead legacy.
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But there's another £17m mistake clearly rankling in the back of the boss' mind – one he can put right once and for all this summer.
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It's a critical transfer window for Celtic and Rodgers has made no secret of the fact he's anxious not to sit still.
"It's all about improvement. I think naturally what you have at our club is a natural slide of players that move out and come in every three or four years," he said in April. "We always want to improve the team, improve the hunger in the team. 'That's always key. You need the freshness."
It won't be a clear-out but it will be a substantial spring clean, the need for it underpinned after coming up just short in the hunt for a Treble.
Rodgers' third season last time he was at Parkhead may forever be remembered for the way he left the club bang in the middle of their charge to a ninth title on the spin, but in his mind, the issues started a little bit earlier than that.
Up until that point it had been unbroken progress. Both previous summers were rampant success stories: the arrivals of Moussa Dembele, Scott Sinclair, Kristoffer Ajer, Patrick Roberts and Odsonne Edouard had helped to build the most fearsome Celtic team of the modern era.
But at some point they stopped and stood still. Perhaps feeling they no longer needed to spend to rack up the titles, the summer of 2018 saw them take their foot off the gas.
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Yes, they spent a then-record fee of £8m to make Edouard's loan from PSG permanent, a deal that in the future would pay off.
But in a summer where they raked in £25m in sales of key men like Moussa Dembele and Scott Armstrong, that was their only financial outlay.
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Who else did they sign that summer? Emilio Izaguirre returned for a second spell, Youssouf Mulumbu and Scott Bain both arrived on frees. Filip Benkovic was loaned in, as was Daniel Arzani – a player Rodgers clearly didn't want and hardly played him thereafter.
The squad had weakened. Their only expenditure was on retaining a player. They were in the green to the tune of £17m and parked the spending there.
Rodgers spotted the problem brewing there and then. Speaking that August, after a dropping out of Champions League to AEK Athens, Rodgers told the BBC: "You have to always guard against being complacent. You do that by adding to the squad. It's pretty obvious, you have to keep progressing and keep getting stronger.
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"You only need to look at Liverpool, who got to the Champions League final and invested the money they had to be stronger."
Even despite the upheaval that came with Rodgers' exit in February, this was the season Celtic went on to seal the treble Treble under Neil Lennon. So it was hard for fans to be too concerned about it there and then.
Yet looking back, this summer was the early warning sign that led to a brief yet sharp and painful decline which needed Ange Postecoglou and a recruitment drive for the ages to put right.
Rodgers has hinted in the past about not seeing eye to eye with the board on transfers and, whenever he winks in that direction, it's the summer of 2018, the of his first spell in charge, ringing loud and clear in his mind.
That's why, as he approaches the same junction in his second trophy-laden tenure at Parkhead, he's made it crystal clear he won't stand for another summer standing still.
And who could blame him?