Celtic begin the preparations for life in Division Two with
the signing of Fabio Borini from Leicester City in a deal that has out of
favour Defender Bruno Martins-Indi heading the other way. Celtic Manager Sir Kevin
Wallace spoke to the press shortly after the arrival of Borini and discussed
the season just ended and his plans for the step up following Celtic’s successful
promotion season.
‘Its been a bit of a rollercoaster season for us, good runs
then a bit of madness and maybe just too many draws but the aim was to survive
first, try for the play-offs second and automatic promotion was the ultimate
goal…to achieve that in my first season here and to build on the work of two
promotions achieved by my predecessor has I hope delighted the supporters and
allowed them to dream of yet better things to come’
‘We are realistic, Division Two is a step up again and we
will once again follow the three step policy that sees survival as the only
goal we focus on until that is achieved, then and only then do we look forward,
this is a big club with a loyal support which regularly fills 60,000 seats at Celtic
Park and the rise from Division 5 to 2 in three seasons has been the result of
hard work by everyone at the club but you can’t rest on that, the competition
gets harder and you have to up your efforts all the time. The supporters know I
am in this for the long haul and we will all work together to achieve our aims’
‘We could have won the league this year, we accept that
points were dropped and I take the blame for that, my cautious attitude maybe
didn’t allow the players full flow to express themselves, you learn and you
adapt and I think we may have some surprises in store for a good few sides next
season.’
‘I don’t expect many additions to the squad as we have a
superb core running through the team from Fernandez and Dragovic at the back to
the excellent cover and creativity in front of them in Paulinho and
Milinkovic-Savic and then the lads pushing forward in Chadli, Raffael and Shane
Long…this is a spine of a team that doesn’t need much work and in truth I will
be reducing the squad a bit this season and our focus is on maybe a couple of
decent backup players just to give a bit of depth but I know this squad can
survive and move forward at a higher level.’
‘One area I wanted to improve was up front, Borini is a
proven scorer with a near 50% goals to games ratio in the past few seasons
which is impressive given how little some managers have used him, add to that
his ability to drop back and play wide he is exactly what I wanted to bring in
and I am delighted to have secured him so early in the planning for next season
that he gets time to play and fit in to our system…we also have Jordan Rhodes
who has done well and Lucas Viatri who never lets me down and between those
three we will score goals and still have the midfield three as a threat as well’
‘I’d also like to say a word about our keeper Stefanos
Kapino, he’s a young lad, he took his chance when he got it and he never let me
down once and has deserved the run of games he got and was always my first
choice keeper for the season, I know he will continue to grow and learn and it’s
nice to know I have a keeper who I can trust.’
‘We will look back over the season, analyse a few decisions
in games we lost or drew and look at what worked as well, and then we will
focus on Division Two, survival and returning Celtic to the top level as soon
as we can’
‘On behalf of the board and supporters at Celtic and
especially the team I want to wish all our competitors a very Happy New Year when
it comes and lets all look forward to the battles ahead in our league in 2018’
‘First round in the bar is on me’
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