Celtic Diary Monday June 16 2025: The East End Shuffle

With the transfer window now fully open, the wind of change is blowing through the stands at Celtic Park. In fact, there might even be some work done on the stands, such as a lick of paint here and there, and maybe even fixing some of the broken seats.

With Callum Osmand pretty much a Celt, another forward looks set to join him in Glasgow. Benjamin Nygren, a winger from Nordsjaelland in Sweden wants to follow in the footsteps of his countrymen Larsson, Mjallby and Lustig to earn legendary status at Celtic.

Reports indicate that he’ll sign for around £2m, as he is out of contract soon.

Osmand probably won;t go into the first team, but Nygren should, and if stories are true that Celtic have rekindled interest in yet another forward, Michel Ange Balikwisha of Antwerp, then it may be because someone has decided to move on.

As we have said before, Nicolas Kuhn, who always ups his game against German sides, if you don’t count Dortmund, is one of a few players to have expressed an interest in leaving. RB Leipzig are mentioned as a destination, which is where he started. £15m seems to be the starting price for bids, which would cover his replacements..

Manager Brendan Rodgers is trying to strengthen, the collapse in attitude post Bayern Munich from the team suggests he had prioritised improvement in Europe, and the players seemed to have bought into that, offering disciplined and mature performances ( if you don’t count Dortmund ) that achieved the pre tournament aim, which was the knockout stages.

Now, it seems, he wants to go further… if we look back at his comments after St johnstone beat Celtic in April, the players can’t say they weren’t warned;

There’s definitely anger. I’m trying to control it.  Poor start to the game, not the first time.

This is something that we will look at, certainly in the summer.  It’s mentality.

It’s a group that has mental strength but I’ve been in teams, especially up here, where you just power your way through the season, right to the very end.

When you’re comfortable, you become a bit timid, you lose duels and you lose the fight. You can never be that if you want to be a top player. So collectively, that’s the annoyance.

Looks like he’s still angry, and we will see more than the already mentioned changes.

Stephen McGowan of the Daily Mail, who gets the odd snippet from Celtic Park every now and again in return for not reminding the board about their sometimes less than competent actions, talks of another dabble in the Japanese market

Celtic are working on a surprise move for Japanese defender Hayato Inamura.

Surprisingly, McGowan makes no mention of Shunsuke Nakamura, the first Japanese player to make his mark at Celtic, and undoubtedly a major influence on the others who moved to Glasgow.

Which means he’s been fed a line, and although it may be true, it may also be just a line to show Celtic have cast their net back into the productive waters of the east.

Or it might be aimed at Greg Taylor, who still hasn’t actually joined anyone else.

Overall, though, it may be that we’ve gone back to projects, those players who the management think will be worth a few quid firther down the line. There’s no doubt that works, in some cases, and in the main, it’s a successful model.

But it does make me wonder of the board are perhaps less keen than last year to give Brendan the green light on the more expensive signings, given that Adam Idah and Austin Trusty haven’t yet shown their worth, and don;t look like they’re going to get any better….

Factor in doubt around UCL qualification, from not only the club’s point of view, but from that of a potential signing, and we may well be covering the waterfront.

The new FIFA World Club cup is underway , and it’s already thrown up some mismatches, with Bayern Munich beating a side from Auckland, who had to leave some players out of their squad because they couldn;t get time off work.

There were stories some time ago that diddy clubs would be allowed in, for whatever reason…

On Friday, we had this…

Today