![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/chris-sutton.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSutton’s been warning the board on the pages of the Daily Record that this has been coming for months<\/p>\n
Celtic columnist<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755937028_385_0_Celtic-v-Kairat-Almaty.jpg\")
Peter Lawwell (L) and Michael Nicholson (Image: SNS Group)<\/p>\n
The Celtic<\/a> board can\u2019t say they weren\u2019t warned.<\/p>\n The supporters let their feelings be known the other night after a dismal performance against Kairat Almaty.<\/p>\n And it was blatantly obvious the chickens have come home to roost.<\/p>\n Michael Nicholson<\/a> and Peter Lawwell<\/a> found themselves in the firing line \u2013 but they could have avoided all the abuse if they\u2019d been reading this column in Record Sport .<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been saying for weeks this shambles of a transfer window could seriously come back to bite them on the backsides.<\/p>\n And yet here we are.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t mind me, I\u2019m just sitting here wearing my I Told You So T-shirt. Believe me, it doesn\u2019t give me any pleasure.<\/p>\n In fact, I can\u2019t actually get my head around how Celtic got themselves in this position.<\/p>\n There are people who claim the Parkhead board are too cautious. I don\u2019t see it that way.<\/p>\n Not when they are taking the biggest gamble of them all by refusing to give Brendan Rodgers the proper tools going into this Champions League play-off.<\/p>\n Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. That\u2019s the phrase that came to mind the other night.<\/p>\n It was always going to be a tricky tie no matter who they got at this stage. But failing to replace Kyogo, Jota and Nicolas Kuhn was a self-inflicted own goal that\u2019s now left them facing a huge task of getting away with it next week in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n Celtic might still get through. Even with the lack of attacking signings, they could still find a way of squeezing past Kairat.<\/p>\n Yet the job has been made far tougher than it needed to be. It\u2019s mind-boggling how they got here.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t work out if it\u2019s complacently or incompetence, or maybe even arrogance.<\/p>\n Did they think this squad was going to have enough to get through the tie and then they could go out and spend for the group stage?<\/p>\n Did they not see the Scottish Cup Final? Did they fall asleep during the last three Rangers games?<\/p>\n Have they not heard Rodgers talking about taking the club to the next level after pushing Bayern Munich close in February or talking about needing fresh faces after St Johnstone? Obviously not.<\/p>\n For whatever reasons, it\u2019s a dereliction of duty.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t say Celtic are not a well-run club given their stability and resources. But supporters have stumped up good money to watch their side in huge numbers.<\/p>\n They deserve is their club to at least attempt to put the best possible team on the pitch.<\/p>\n To have their Champions League fate in the balance when they have tens of millions in the bank is frankly ridiculous.<\/p>\n I felt sorry for Rodgers the other night, and in recent weeks in general. He\u2019s the one who\u2019s had to front up and try to explain the indefensible.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been begging for new signings in the forward areas \u2013 and yet look what he was left with the other night.<\/p>\n Rodgers has often said a team is only as strong as the XI that finishes a match, not just the one that starts it.<\/p>\n Well, have a look at what was out there at full-time against Kairat. The board must have seen it too. And this is a year on from them saying lessons had to be learned from last summer\u2019s blundering window.<\/p>\n What\u2019s happened to the so-called football doctor in all of this?<\/p>\n Paul Tisdale came in last October but so either the recruitment department has failed to find the replacements the team needs or the club failed to get the deals done.<\/p>\n Something isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n Rodgers\u2019 comments about Hayato Inamura before the game were incredible. If he\u2019s not up to the job then why was he signed \u2013 and by who?<\/p>\n When you take out Jota and Tierney, it\u2019s like Tisdale\u2019s department are unearthing lots of hidden gems.<\/p>\n The likes of Benjamin Nygren might come good, but that wasn\u2019t an area of the pitch that needed attention anyway.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve got no doubt we\u2019ll be told it\u2019s tough to get players to come to Scotland, or you have to wait to get quality. They might say clubs are holding off selling until they bring in replacements. Yeah, that is how most of them operate \u2013 apart from Celtic.<\/p>\n No, they are happy to flog their best assets without a contingency in place.<\/p>\n A player wants to go? No problem, we\u2019ll take the money.<\/p>\n How about they get sold when it suits the club?<\/p>\n The club would say it would have been a gamble not taking the money but it\u2019s an even bigger risk when there\u2019s \u00a340million from the group stage at stake.<\/p>\n All of it is utter nonsense.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Celtic that clearly have an issue and there\u2019s an obvious disconnect between the board\u2019s thinking and the ambitions of the manager and the support.<\/p>\n On the manager, you can forget about Rodgers signing a new deal. Why would he?<\/p>\n He\u2019s been sent into a Champions League play-off with both arms tied behind his back.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t need this grief. He must have looked at his bench the other night and wondered \u2013 f*** me, what is the point?<\/p>\n Rodgers had a centre-back at left-back, Daizen Maeda bouncing between the wing and up front, Yang \u2013 who Rodgers admitted is only still at the club because no replacement was signed \u2013 sent on to try to turn around the game.<\/p>\n He machine-gunned Adam Idah with the decision to hook him at half-time and then took a baseball bat to the board after the game.<\/p>\n He\u2019s not going to stick around any longer than he has to if this is the club\u2019s idea of progress and his message afterwards was clear.<\/p>\n They\u2019ll have their work cut out in Almaty, that\u2019s for sure. Kairat were a lot stronger than some expected. They were defensively superb, well organised and posed a threat.<\/p>\n There were plenty of warning signs from them the other night \u2013 but Celtic have become experts at ignoring warning signs, haven\u2019t they?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sutton’s been warning the board on the pages of the Daily Record that this has been coming for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7336,2817,1669,18666,218,43738,43737,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-86995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-brendan-rodgers","tag-celtic-fc","tag-champions-league","tag-chris-sutton","tag-football","tag-michael-nicholson","tag-peter-lawwell","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_JS378327450.jpg\")
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_JS378326912.jpg\")
Brendan Rodgers cuts a frustrated figure on the touchline<\/p>\n