Brendan Rodgers says Celtic will review their transfer strategy after failing to bring in a replacement for striker Kyogo Furuhashi.
The Hoops boss made it clear that he wanted someone to take over from the Japan forward who departed for Ligue 1 side Rennes last month for £10m after hitting 85 goals for the Hoops following his arrival in the summer of 2021.
Winger Jota returned to Celtic 18 months after leaving, and Jeffrey Schlupp signed late on loan from Crystal Palace until the end of the season but when the winter window closed on Monday night there was no new main striker.
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Celtic are now left with just Adam Idah as the sole senior centre-forward on the books with 21-year-old Johnny Kenny, who recently returned from a loan spell with Shamrock Rovers, as back-up. 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.
Speaking ahead of the rearranged Premiership game against Dundee at Parkhead on Wednesday night, where Schlupp should be available, Rodgers assessed the transfer window and insisted he will not allow any disappointment to taint his overall joy at being manager in what promises to be another hugely successful season.
He said: “It’s something that I said clearly we wanted to do, we wanted to have that support at the top end of the field. We didn’t manage to do that.
“I don’t want to pin blame on anyone here. I think as a collective, it wasn’t ideal, how it ended for us.
“So we have to, as a club, now go away and look at that like we do every window.
“There wasn’t a great deal happening when you look around, but certainly all I was concerned about was for Celtic and what I needed to happen here. So we will look into that and move forward.
“There’s so many different facets to the transfer, obviously the identification of a player, then convincing the player to come, which, in the main, is never a problem for here.
“But we just weren’t quite able to get a deal done so it’s something that we as a club, we’ll review the whole process and then look to be better again in the summer.
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“There’s no doubt that the squad is lighter.
“But I just will work hard. We’ll focus in on this next four months, really exciting period for us, and we’ll have a tighter squad, but also a squad that is improving in development.
“I think there’s still improvement in the squad, but it’ll be tighter than it was before.”
Rodgers understands the frustrations of those Celtic fans who believe Kyogo should not have been allowed to leave before a replacement was in place.
The Northern Irishman said: “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.
“It’s a fair enough thing to say, you can very easily say, ‘well, you should really have someone in the door before you let him go’.
“But there was a situation with that player, which meant that wasn’t the case, and that was something that we had been running for a number of months, not just for the few days and before he left.
“I repeat, 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. I think that is the focus. I don’t really want to be looking back.
“I’m not going to become frustrated now and kill my joy of working here every day at the club by thinking of what could have been.
“We can’t affect that now. We can review it and move on.”
