Legacy of the Hoops | Part 2 | The Dressing Room

Welcome back to my DoF-style series. Previously, I outlined my plans as acting Director of Football at Celtic FC. In this update, we will be taking a look at Henrik Larsson’s first duties in his new role. We will look at the playing style that we will be creating, how the current squad matches up to this tactical blueprint and casting an eye over any youth players who could earn some minutes this season.

“We did it by playing football. Pure, beautiful, inventive football.”
Jock Stein

Football at Celtic Park has always been more than simply winning. The fans want to be entertained. When the Lisbon Lions won the European Cup, the tactical style was the complete opposite to Helenio Herrera’s great catenaccio side with Inter Milan and vibrant attractive football has been labelled ‘The Celtic Way’.

I’m taking some liberties with Jock’s quote and I’ll be going for standard possession based football. Using the tactical preset is really simple to set up and gives me something that my head coach wouldn’t need to touch – limiting the duties for my DoF. I’ll be on key highlights and barring some slight mentality changes or touchline shouts depending on how the match is going, I won’t be touching anything until around 60 minutes. From there it is all about managing player minutes and paying players in the correct positions.

The squad is obviously a capable one. Whatever combination of players I pick should win the majority of games. The challenges are games vs Rangers, the odd away tie against Hibs/ Hearts/ Aberdeen and Europe where we are in the CL group stage. As DoF I need to make sure that the squad is geared for success in the long term, able to withstand player sales and also streamlined enough so that we don’t block youth pathways to the first team.

My early impression is that the squad has a few too many players. Ideally we should have a maximum of 23 players yet we sit here on day one with 27 players. I’ve picked three key areas of the squad that I’d like to focus on.

Goalkeeper

We start with four keepers. Quite simply, two must go and soon. I think Joe Hart stays, he’s good enough for us and brings experience. I’ll just have to watch out for him declining. Then Bain, Siegrist and Hazard aren’t too dissimilar so I think I’ll keep Hazard for his low wages and moderate potential. Clarke is a decent prospect but has a long way to come. There’s also Oluwayemi out on loan who has high potential.

Central Midfield

Another well-stocked area of the team, just look at the role above. This is the ‘destroyer’ in my three-man midfield, the most defensively-minded of the three, and not including any creative roles. I think ideally I’d like five players who can cover across the entire central midfield positions, with somebody in the reserves ready to step in. Right now I’d keep it to six, which means we’ll need to say goodbye to at least Ideguchi and McCarthy before we think about Lawal, Kelly and Carse coming through.

Striker

Finally, an area that isn’t overstocked and dare I say our weakest position? Kyogo Furuhashi is fantastic but Maeda isn’t really a striker and Oh Hyeon-Gyu is very raw. There’s also not much in the way of any prospects really. Dobbie is perhaps the closest but he’s still in the U18s like Dede. A backup striker will be one of the first in the door I think, but Oh will get a chance.

Squad planning needs to be methodical with each position mapped out. This will extend further to wage caps and scrutinised squad status, again all mapped out and rigidly stuck to. I need to be ruthless in letting players go if needed, but to do so I need a continuous shortlist of players waiting in the wings.

Final Thoughts

I think I’ve made a minor boo-boo! In some early contract negotiations with some B-Team players I added a wage rise after 20 games… I’m really hoping that B-Team games don’t count towards that! I’m guessing because they play in the Lowland league and not a standard reserves league then that’s confusing the issue. Bugger.

Youth development has to be a priority. Aside from those players who I mentioned from central midfield and striker I’d say there’s a possibility that Dane Murray (CB) will earn some game time and our starlet is Rocco Vata, but unfortunately, he’s been plagued by injury in the early stages.