Celtic transfer window 'not ideal' concedes Rodgers
2025-02-05
Category: sports

Scottish Premiership: Celtic v DundeeVenue: Celtic Park, Glasgow Date: Wednesday, 5 February Time: 19:45 GMTCoverage: Listen on BBC Radio Scotland Extra & Sounds, live text commentary on the BBC Sport website, highlights on BBC One Scotland from 22:40
Manager Brendan Rodgers admits the January transfer window "wasn't ideal" for Celtic but is not apportioning blame ahead of a club review.The Scottish Premiership leaders signed Jeffrey Schlupp from Crystal Palace on deadline day and brought winger Jota back from Rennes, with forward Kyogo Furuhashi moving in the opposite direction."I said it myself, we wanted another striker, so we're not hiding behind anything," said Rodgers."And absolutely, the supporters will look and see that a top striker has gone out, a legendary striker."So I understand that. But all I can do is affect what we have now and look to teach and work very hard and finish off what has been, until now, a great season for us."Adam Idah has responded to the void left by Kyogo's departure with three goals in two games, having gone without scoring since late November.Johnny Kenny, 21, has returned from a loan spell with Shamrock Rovers, while Daizen Maeda can also play through the middle, although he is suspended for the first leg of the Champions League play-off against Bayern Munich next week."I don't want to pin blame on anyone here," added Rodgers. "I think as a collective, it wasn't ideal how it ended for us. We have to, as a club now, go away and look at that, like we do in every window."I'm not going to become frustrated and kill my joy of working here by thinking what could have been."
Rodgers was asked if it was a mistake to allow Furuhashi, who scored 85 goals in 165 appearances, to leave without a replacement in place."Some people will say that, but you don't have the depth of knowledge that I have on the player and working with him, and going back to the summer," he replied."You can very easily say, 'well, you should really have someone in the door before you let him go'. But there was a situation which meant that wasn't the case, and that was something that we had been running for a number of months."If a player does not want to be here, then we do the best deal and move on."I think we brought in some really good players. Could we have done better? Yeah, we could."However, we work with the players here now. That is the focus. I don't really want to be looking back."
'A number nine main priority for summer'
Former Celtic midfielder Scott Allan on BBC Radio ScotlandAdam Idah will be looking to come to the fore now. They've got Johnny Kenny and Daniel Cummings, who they had offers for from West Ham.We know Daizen Maeda can play up top and has done for Japan so it'll be interesting to see what Brendan Rodgers does, moving forward.They obviously didn't have the right guy to come in and replace Kyogo so, for me, come the summer, that will be the main priority for Celtic - getting a number nine in. There are reasons why they didn't make any rash decisions to just jump the gun and take someone in just for the sake of it.