You have to speculate to accumulate. One of businesses greatest sayings. Take a chance and it may pay off as long as the right opportunity came up to maximise the potential of the situation you find yourself in. Celtic found themselves in that same opportunity every year, Champions League qualifiers. The very utterance of that phrase has been a bane of frustration for Celtic supporters, especially in recent seasons.
One of the main reasons for that it Celtic’s transfer policy. It has been critiqued for years. Long it has been a source of frustration for the fans whenever Champions League qualifiers come round and Peter Lawwell always seemed to have a “wait and see” policy before committing funds to strengthen the team and more often than not, the team came up short meaning with either the second prize of Europa League football or the ignominy of no European football. Thankfully the latter has been a rare event but we have had near misses for a number of years.
Speaking to Football Insider, Frank McAvennie believes the blame for that lies solely at departing Chief Executive, Peter Lawwell’s door, “I have not got a problem with Peter even though there is a lot of things he has done wrong,”
“I am a great believer in getting players as early as possible, before the season starts.
“Instead he would wait and see if we made it into Europe but that is silly. You need those signings through the door to get you through the qualifying ties.
“You should bring them in before pre-season if possible. Do not bring them in after pre-season. If Peter had a fault, that was it, not buying players quick enough.
“He has tried to bring players in that the club can make a profit on. When John Park was there they did that very successfully. You look at the likes of Virgil van Dijk, Moussa Dembele and Victor Wanyama – these are good players.”
You will certainly find no argument here on Frank’s view and there have been many years of transfer neglect which have cost Celtic the opportunity of progressing to the lucrative group stages of Europe’s premier competition.
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