Celtic's recruitment since June 2021

Rodgers was the problem and then Nancy was the problem ...... seems to be the view of many fans. So Celtic should win the league now that both have gone then!

Whilst not excusing both managers who quite clearly contributed negatively to this season's performance it is my opinion neither are the main contributors to where Celtic are as a club. Recruitment is the core issue in my view and has been for a few years now.

Why is recruitment an issue?;

• Poor scouting (so lack of options)?

• tough guidelines given to the recruitment team (ie maximum spend or wage etc)?

• a lack of strategic planning by the recruitment team (ie looking at players or making bids from January 1st rather than many months before)?

• a breakdown in negotiations between Celtic and the selling club and/or player?

• a bad reputation (ie clubs don't like dealing with Celtic due to previous relationships or the image Celtic have created)?

• no cohesion between the recruitment department and manager (ie players do not fit the system)?

• or, a mixture of the above?

I don't think there are many Celtic supporters that would disagree with me that recruitment is an issue but there may be some that don't agree with my view that recruitment is a far bigger issue than what Rodgers or Nancy were.

So what constitutes good recruitment? Some get fixated on price paid and price sold for. Celtic bought Henrik Larsson for £650k and he left on a free. Was that bad business? Celtic bought Bernabei for £3.8m and sold him for £4.8m and made £1m profit? Was that good business? There's wages paid and underperformance impact to the team to be taken into account amongst other things. Also to be taken into consideration is how they helped their teammates. Maeda had great success playing through the middle last season and his value will have risen as a result however having Kuhn (who's even faster) at the side of him was an important contributing factor.

For me a successful signing;

• Plays a meaningful amount of games

• Helps the team be successful

• Helps develop their teammates therefore adding to their teammates transfer value

• Is sold for more than bought for with wages paid taken into consideration too

Even if fans agree with my criteria above it is still subjective.

How do we hold the board to account for recruitment? One metric that can shed some light objectively is games played. Yeah injuries and being loaned out etc are some of the reasons for non playing time but as a starting point whether the player was picked by the manager is a good objective measure.

So I've had a look at % of games started, % of games played and % of minutes played as measures to see which players were picked by the manager and therefore constituting some sort of successful recruitment. It can be skewed by competition (ie two good left wingers Jota//Maeda could reduce either's minutes) but it's a starting point.

There are 55 players signed since June 2021 (Ange's first season) and only 10 of them have started more than two thirds of the league games. One of them includes Araujo.

The top two are goalkeepers with Joe Hart playing in 109 of the 114 games (96%) and Schmeichel playing in 53 of 60 games (88%).

The best outfield player for % of starts is Matt O'Riley as he started 85% of the 95 games he could have and actually played some part in 98% of them. (81% of the minutes played) with Starfelt in 2nd with 77% starts (82% played and 78% of minutes).

Maeda is next with 73% of starts (93% played and 67% of minutes) and Carter-Vickers is next on 72% but that's mainly down to injury and his matches played is 75%.

Engels has started 68% however incredibly has played in 96% of the games.

Kyogo has 68% starts (85% games played) and Johnston is the last of the ten with 67% starts but like Carter-Vickers this is down to injury with 68% of games played.

There are four players who have 90% games played but less than 67% games started and they are Nygren (64% started and 100% played), Schlupp, on loan (50% started and 93% played), Idah (48% started and 96% played) and McCowan who has 40% started and 96% played. McCowan has played in 55 of the 57 league games since joining Celtic with the only exceptions being a game at Tynecastle and a game at Ibrox.

A player who equals McCowan differential between starts and games played (56 percentage points) is Oh who had 11% starts and 67% games played.

Scales is only at 44% starts but he had a season on loan where he missed 38 opportunities of starting for Celtic and he did start all season for Aberdeen. However I did decide it was best to measure this way as that is 38 games Celtic didn't have the opportunity to play him or didn't want to play him as they put him out on loan.

List of players by position.

Full details on list below. Fees taken from transfermrkt.

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