Editor Column: Success Without Strategy - The Stagnant Celtic Board

A look at the cost of a board allergic to risk.

Another title has been won. Another flag is ready to be unfurled. Celtic Park should be brimming with certainty and steel as the new season dawns.

But instead, with the SPFL curtain-raiser just a week away, there’s a growing unease that something essential is missing. The squad feels undercooked. The window, once again, underwhelms. And for all the warm tributes that will swirl in the air as that league flag is raised, the mood around the club is less triumphant than it is tense.

Because Celtic fans have seen this film before — and they know how it ends in Europe.

It’s not that the club won’t spend. It’s that it refuses to invest with conviction.

And in a summer that will end with a Champions League play-off — a moment of truth that could shape the season before it’s even found its rhythm — Celtic are gambling, again, on doing just enough.

The Mirage of Spending

Yes, the board can point to numbers: £11m on Arne Engels, £6m on Auston Trusty, £6m on Carter-Vickers, £9m on Jota.

But these flashes of activity are held up like grand gestures — exceptions to the rule — when they should be the starting point. Engels shouldn’t be a banner signing; he should be a normal signing for a club that sold Matt O’Riley for £25m last summer.

This isn’t a question of affordability. It’s a question of intent.

Every year, fans are sold the line that spending doesn’t guarantee success. True. But failing to strengthen almost always guarantees failure, especially in Europe. Celtic’s Champions League qualification record since our dominance really kicked in is sketchy, if we’re being kind. Across 13 seasons, Celtic’s Champions League qualification record reads not like the tale of a European heavyweight, but of a team forever slipping on the same rung of the ladder. Seven Champions League proper appearances — four earned the hard way, three automatic qualifications — sit alongside six bruising eliminations, and not at the hands of Europe’s aristocracy.

Maribor. Malmö. AEK Athens. CFR Cluj. Ferencváros. Midtjylland. These aren’t the giants of the continental game. They’re good sides, well-drilled, no doubt. But they represent the kind of opponents Celtic should be navigating past. Instead, time and again, they became banana skins.

It’s like watching a boxer dominate the domestic circuit, only to step up in class and get caught cold by the first stiff jab. Not because the opponent was better — but because the fighter wasn’t sharp, wasn’t ready, hadn’t trained properly for the big night.

These defeats don’t speak to bad luck or hard draws. They speak to a failure of planning. A squad unready. A manager let down. A club that wins titles in May and turns up for Europe in August still hunting for a left-back and a striker.

Our domestic dominance should have ushered in a golden age of European presence. Instead, the legacy is a coin toss between progress and painful regression. A model that’s supposed to protect the club has, at crucial moments, left it exposed. And the price? Lost prestige, lost millions, and a support that knows the outcome before the ball is even kicked.

Domestic Dominance — And the Danger of Coasting

Yes, Celtic have dominated Scottish football. Twelve of the last thirteen titles. Trebles are being won like they’re going out of fashion.

But success, when unchallenged, becomes a sedative.

The board’s philosophy is rooted in the belief that doing just enough domestically will be enough. But that only holds while Rangers flounder. Sooner or later, they’ll get it right. They’ll find a manager. A system. A striker. They’ll catch lightning in a bottle.

And when that happens — when the margin for error disappears — Celtic will discover that the comfort they mistook for stability was actually stagnation in disguise.

Rodgers and the Warnings They’ll Ignore

Brendan Rodgers didn’t come back to coast. He came to elevate.

He’s already dropped enough hints in public: this squad needs more. Needs better. Needs clarity. And yet, here he stands, a week out from the season’s start, hoping his centre-backs stay fit, his midfield stays functional and Idah finds his shooting boots.

Rodgers will walk at the end of the season after he’s done the three years he put pen to paper for. Any chance of a longer stay dwindles with every passing day in this transfer window. But the board seems content to spin the same roulette wheel, praying that a few deadline-day deals and a bounce in form will hold everything together.

Brendan Rodgers brought the blueprint the first time. He raised the standards, modernised the culture, made Celtic feel like a club with ideas — not just tradition. And what did the board do when he left? They binned the blueprint like it was covered in anthrax and went back to signing squad fillers.

Then came Ange Postecoglou — a bold appointment, to be fair. Credit where it’s due: Celtic took a punt when others scoffed. And what did Ange do? He didn’t just win trophies — he recalibrated the entire operation. Recruitment, playing style, tempo, purpose. He gave the club a system, not just a team. And for a while, it felt like Celtic were finally thinking with both sides of their brain.

But here we are again. The structure has fallen by the wayside. Not because the manager is unambitious — but because he’s too ambitious. Brendan Rodgers didn’t come back for sentimental reasons. He came to build on progress. To go further. But in the eyes of this board, ambition and intent make them squirm in their seats. And so he’s once again being asked to paint a masterpiece with crayons.

As Celtic prepare for the flag to rise, supporters should be dreaming about the Champions League group stages. Instead, they’re watching an unbalanced squad limp toward a play-off tie that will define the first third of the campaign.

It is madness to approach a match of that magnitude under-strength. But Celtic have done it before. They’ll likely do it again.

Because for this board — long-serving, slow-moving — the bar remains pitifully low.

“Just enough” to stay ahead of Rangers.

“Just enough” to reach the group stages.

“Just enough” to avoid the full wrath of supporters.

But European football doesn’t forgive caution. It devours it.

The club hoards cash for a rainy day. If you’re standing outside, you might be able to feel a drizzle:

• A bloated fixture calendar

• An under-strength squad

• A fanbase losing patience

• A manager demanding better

And yet, the same faces at the top — Desmond (1995), Allison (2001), Wilson (2005), Nicholson (2015) Lawwell 2002 as CEO returned in 2023 — carry on as if modern football doesn’t apply to them They treat risk like a contagion, innovation like a gimmick, and European failure like an unavoidable act of nature. The board isn’t some vibrant mix of ideas and innovation — it’s stale. It’s comfortable. It’s stick-to-what-you-know conservatism dressed up as strategy. A place where imagination goes to die and ambition is treated like a health hazard.

It isn’t. It’s a consequence of neglect.

Celtic will raise the flag next week. They’ll celebrate. And they should.

But league flags don’t win play-off ties. Sentiment doesn’t score goals. And history doesn’t protect you from the future.

The club sits on record cash reserves like a miser with a fear of decimal points. Supporters pay through the nose for season tickets, third kits, overpriced pies — and in return, they’re offered the strategic equivalent of “let’s just see what happens.”

Nobody’s asking for madness. No one’s screaming for £20 million panic buys and private jets full of washed-up La Liga veterans. What they’re asking for is purpose. Vision. Alignment between manager, board and recruitment.

Fans can accept failure. They cannot accept drift.

Celtic aren’t a cautionary tale yet. But they’re definitely sketching the outline. And if the club keeps mistaking stability for strategy, they’ll wake up one day to find themselves overtaken by clubs with half the resources — but twice the conviction.

Because when a club does just enough, for just long enough, it doesn’t fall off a cliff.

It fades. Slowly. Silently.

Until one day, you look up at the Champions League lights — and realise you’ve forgotten how to shine.

Craig Finn