Nobody will argue with the fact that Celtic have been terrible on the pitch through the course of this season. They are 18 points behind the Rangers in the league, failed to make the Champions League for the third straight year and got knocked out of both the Europa League and the Scottish League Cup at the very first step.
Clearly, both the players and Neil Lennon deserve a lot of the blame. But they are not the only ones though. It is hard not too feel that how badly the Hoops have done in the transfer market in recent times has gone overlooked due to their success in domestic competitions. Now that they have failed on the pitch though, their failures off it appear to be glaring as well.
Just take a look at this campaign. They did considerable money in the transfer market but the players that were brought were either not good enough or not suited to this team. That is just bad recruitment.
And the blame for that should fall on Nick Hammond, who is the Head of Football Operations at the moment. While speaking on the Record Celtic Podcast (as cited by Video Celts), Chris Sutton pointed out his shortcomings and urged the board to appoint a Sporting Director immediately:
"“Nicky Hammond has one helluva job on and his track record has frankly been woeful at Celtic. There’s talk about a Sporting Director coming in now but Celtic need to get a Sporting Director in immediately if they want to move forward and actually challenge Rangers next season.”"
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Celtic must make some big decisions over the next few months
There has been some positive noise coming out of the rumour mill when it comes to the structural changes at Celtic that are expected to come in soon.
Dominic McKay is set to replace Peter Lawwell at the end of this season and he appears to be a supporter of getting a director of football. A number of high profile names have been linked with the role already including Manchester City’s Fergal Harkin and David Webb, who has worked for Tottenham Hotspur and Bournemouth in the past.
Interestingly, most of these names are involved in the transfer market, which suggests that that is the department that the Hoops might be looking to improve upon more than anything else, which is a promising prospect if indeed true.