The hasty decision to sell Arne Engels to West Ham without bringing in a replacement, or more accurately failing to show the ambition to bring in a replacement, is hitting Celtic where it hurts most – in the pocket…

A Champions League exit against LASK, surrendering a 4-0 aggregate lead, wiped £40m off the table then over the past week there are financial implications in a pathetic exit from the Premier Sports Cup at Ibrox and the Europa League embarrassment against Ferencvaros on Thursday evening.

Today the 100% record in the Scottish Premiership will be threatened by the Rangers at Celtic Park as Celtic face three defeats in a row in the space of a week and the biggest problem is clearly the lack of legs in the middle of the park.

“I always felt Arne was going to be leaving,” Martin O’Neill admitted (via Scottish Sun). “Trying to get a like for like, we looked at a number of players who could do that. For one reason or another, it didn’t materialise.

“He’s been a loss in terms of that running power he can give you,” the veteran Celtic manager admitted.
“In an ideal world, it would have been great to have the likes of Arne. Will we look at that again in January? You’d have to. Very much so.

“January seems a million miles away but it comes around relatively quickly. You’d have to do something like that.”

And Martin O’Neill when asked if the summer signings were purchased to fit a particular system, admitted that this was not actually the case, which begs the question why not?

“Not necessarily. If you’re going to play whatever system you want, you need strong running players in your side,” MON said. “You definitely need that. You need a bit of strength. That was something I thought was lacking from last season.

“You’re trying to get the right person in to do that and sometimes you get frustrated in the transfer market if it doesn’t materialise.

“For all of this talk and the fact we’re in this modern era, it’s still about players being able to break systems down.

“I watched Manchester United the other night, they were 2-0 up and coasting and allowed a team to come back into it because they made mistakes at the back you wouldn’t expect Premier League teams to do.”

The failure to replace Engels is likely to cost the Celtic board more than the transfer fee that the club received from West Ham. And remember they brought much more money in by selling players in the summer than they spent in the transfer window and shamefully failed to replace Arne Engels.

Derek McInnes is back at Celtic Park today and will be looking to exploit the same weakness that got him his best moment as Rangers manager last weekend.

Martin O’Neill though will be looking to find away to work around the weakest point in his squad today and the Celtic support will do their part if there is enough encouragement coming our way from on the pitch.

Let’s hope that’s the case.

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