Celtic’s lack of activity in the summer transfer window – it’s even worse than last year in terms of numbers coming through the door – has inevitably raised questions as to who exactly is in charge of recruitment at the club…
The self-proclaimed Doctor of Football Paul Tisdale was very much front and centre last year, apparently convincing the Desmonds that Celtic were NOT a top 100 European football club and bringing in club signings like the two boys from Japan.
The moment the AGM got a straight Red. #CelticAGM pic.twitter.com/8Ei4nzbfbn
— Glasgow Dave (@glasgowdave571) November 21, 2025
That was the reason why Brendan Rodgers left the club, with Tisdale then managed to sell them the notion that Wilfried Nancy was the ideal manager to replace a Celtic manager who had won 11 trophies for the club and made progress in the Champions League by reaching the knockout rounds, losing out to Bayern Munich in the last kick of the ball in Germany.
Tisdale followed Nancy out the door at the start of the year after six damaging defeats from eight games threatened to derail the season. It ended up costing us the League Cup and as it turned out a Treble.
After Tisdale was sacked there has been nothing from the club on who will head up recruitment at the club, with O’Neill and Shaun Maloney hands on in the January market, looking to pick up some unwanted forwards. Those have come and gone and after helping Celtic to a double, with him and Mark Fotheringham also heading up the coaching, Celtic then tried to lowball the pair over the close season.
Maloney felt that he should be paid for doing the recruitment on top of the coaching role and a sand-off followed before Maloney returned to the training pitches but it seems NOT the recruiting responsibilities.
As Martin O’Neill spoke about NOT having asked for any transfer assurances from Dermot Desmond, he continued by revealing that Celtic are looking to appoint someone as head of recruitment but are actually in no great rush to do so.
“The club are looking at that at this minute,” the Celtic manager said, as reported by The Scottish Sun. “There’s a process but it’s not at the top of the list at this minute.”
O’Neill continued: “I’ve got a couple of boys in the background who are very good. Mark Cooper has been doing really well for us. He’s identified some really (good) players over the last ten or 12 years. I think he’s filling that type of role, head scout whatever you call it, pretty well.
“The recruitment department send stuff over to us and eventually it’s our say that makes the difference. But Shaun isn’t doing that to the same extent he was before. He was doing six or seven jobs at the time. Now he’s just concentrating on this which is fine.”
Make of that what you will folks. More on Mark Cooper to follow on…
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