PAUL TISDALE CELTIC APPROACH VALIDATED? DO PRE-SEASON SURPRISES SHOW THE RECRUITMENT SYSTEM IS WORKING?
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Jul 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 6
A lot has been written over the last few weeks about Celtic’s transfer activity, or seeming lack thereof.
Indeed, I have been among the voices calling for Celtic to be more pro-active and more ambitious in the transfer market, especially when we are as cash-rich as we are right now.
However, arguably the two biggest surprises of Celtic’s pre-season so far have been the consistently decent performances of Hayato Inamura at left back, and the very positive debut of Shin Yamada last night.
I’m not slow to criticize when I think Celtic are getting it wrong, so are the recruitment team, led by our Director of Football Operations Paul Tisdale, due some credit here. Let’s discuss.
Paul Tisdale Celtic Remit Remains a Mystery, But There are Positive Signs
The biggest problem with Paul Tisdale’s time at Celtic thus far has been the complete lack of communication as to what exactly he’s doing.
There was a presentation given to a very few select members of a fans’ forum a while ago. Luckily, one of the attendees was kind enough to share the gist of it with me. So, I have what you might call a “working knowledge” of what Tisdale is doing.
However, the same can’t be said for the average, everyday Celtic supporter. I still don’t get why the club are being so secretive about this. It would be a lot easier for all of us to “trust the process” if we knew just a little about what that process entailed.
Anyway, in the cases of Inamura and Yamada, who despite being very early into their Celtic careers both look pretty decent, I think we can give Tisdale some credit.
He came into his job in winter last year, and I think we all agreed that the January window was too early to judge his impact.
However, both Inamura and Yamada have said in recent interviews that they first became aware of Celtic’s interest in January of this year. Clearly, we monitored these players for a number of months before committing to signing them.
Initial signs are that this has paid off, at least in the case of our two Japanese recruits.
We don’t know what role, if any, Tisdale played in the signing of Benjamin Nygren, but again, finding a player of that profile and quality, whose contract situation allowed him to be signed for a fee that is, in modern football, basically theft, was a great bit of business.
So, if Tisdale had anything to do with that then again, he deserves credit.
It all comes back to the same fundamental problem though, I don’t know if I should praise Tisdale or criticize him, because in all honesty, I have no idea how much of a role he played in any of these transfers.
It is interesting to note though that several of the players linked with Celtic lately are all in a similar contract situation.
Michel-Ange Balikwisha, Justin De Haas, Richard Kone, Giuseppe Ambrosino. All players realistically linked with Celtic in the past 2 weeks or so and all sitting with around a year left on their current deals.
This points to a concerted strategy: identifying players we know would otherwise cost far too much, but which we could sign for a much lower fee due to them entering the final year of their current contracts.
If indeed this is something that Tisdale has instigated since coming to Celtic then, honestly, it’s genius!
But again, we don’t know if this is down to Tisdale, someone else within the scouting team, or somebody else with a laptop and a lifetime of experience playing Championship Manager!
I’m trying to be positive here, I really am, but Celtic’s unnecessary secrecy doesn’t make it easy.
