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Last season at Parkhead being described as a rollercoaster would probably be the understatement of the year, both Bradwell and Celtic had massive ups and downs over the course of the season and at many points no one was sure whether Bradwell would still be here come the end of the season, something changed towards the end of the season and a focused Bradwell cleared his head and managed to fire up his Celtic side to chase down a runaway PSV to earn promotion and hunt down his and Celtics first piece of European silverware in the inaugural Darren Bradwell Cup, which couldn’t of been more fitting, to end the season on a massive high, DB Celtic Park was absolutely bouncing on the final day of the season and Bradwell stated to the media that “This season will live the longest in my memory, it was stuff on what fairytales are wrote on and to achieve it here, to achieve it how we have and to achieve the DBC in its first season will be forever a top highlight”
Moving on to this season, you can see its all change, we were down at the training ground and you couldn’t turn around without seeing a new face on the playing staff, but we aren’t just talking about new faces we are talking about Stars, this past 2 months the green side of Celtic has been absolutely glowing, footballing royalty has arrived at Parkhead for the first time in 2 decades since Henrik Larsson donned the green and white hoops of Celtic, this time, Bradwell has gone bigger than big and had a transfer window to remember, by not bringing in just one star, but a team of Stars, Mo Salah, Heung Min Son, Jack Grealish, Virgil van Dijk, Enzo Fernandez, Christian Romero, Christopher Nkunku and Kalvin Phillips to name 9 of the superstars that have been brough into Celtic Park in what can only be described as ‘If Carling did transfer windows…..’
A Celtic side that at one stage looked like it could fizzle out and wonders of how would that team fair coming into a ferociously tough EFL 1 division and all the glitz and glamour that comes with it, well Celtic fans will be extremely optimistic about the season ahead, as the recent crop of transfers seems to have propelled Celtic from the conversation of, will they survive in their first season back?… to… could they knock on the door and fight for a Champions League spot? The amount of star power next season means that they very much will once again be favourites to win and retain the DB Cup, there also a dark horse in the running to bring home the EFL Cup, mixed in with competing for the Champions League positions, the excitement is completely understandable, Bradwell said to reporters after his side qualified for the knockouts of the pre season tournament yesterday, “Wow, what an off season, what a team and what a set of lads, already they are impressing me, the quality levels are through the roof and I can already say quality wise this is the best team ive ever coached, I watched us rip apart Arsenal 2 nights ago and wonder how we didn’t win, the fans should be excited, we will cause a lot of problems this season and it wont take long for a few to sit back and think, ok we need to put a bit more thought into this one when we play them, that’s a great feeling to have, I have been in this game a long time and its nice to look at this team and think ive finally got a side worthy of being in the conversation.”
Celtic have drawn Real Madrid in the first knockout round of the pre season tournament and Bradwell has said he doesn’t want to give anything away to the Galacticos on what they could expect from his side during the season and therefore will likely try something different out for todays game, when asked what he thought about the pre season tournament so far, Bradwell said “Its been fun, I wasn’t sure I wanted to enter, I thought about keeping everything under wraps until opening night of the season, but we have effectively bought a new team and I thought as much as these lads are top professionals and should easily adapt to playing with each other, minutes on the pitch for me to look at the lads and see their qualities and how they play together was the deciding factor and the group stage of the tournament very much proved that, im not expecting much today but its always nice to see Steve Talbot on the sidelines, Im sure there will be a conversation or two between us over the course.”
There are still plenty of sceptics that suggest Bradwell will have a whole new set of faces come game 5 of the season as Bradwell is known for not being able to help himself when it comes to dabbling in the transfer market, but Bradwells answer to that was “I think ive made it, its never been about doing deals for the sake of it although it might look like it, its always been about trading up and trading down simultaneously in order to trade back up for better than what was there, I think there was still plenty of that to be done here at Celtic and I envisioned at the end of the season a tough challenge and a case of well if we can try and get into the back end of the DPT places id be happy with that, we had a very mismatched side at the end of last season, with only one out and out midfielder in the squad, this off season opportunities came up where teams valued certain things over others and opted for different approaches, those opportunities gave us the ability to act and move this squad on leaps and bounds, I’m not saying we had a bad team but what’s come out of the other end of the factory is a Rolls Royce compared to what we had going in, now we are setup, there’s no trading down, definitely not this season, obviously some of our stars are in and around that 29-31 age gap and those players are in their prime for at least the next 2/3 seasons, will there be another overhaul at some point? Yes of course, will it be in the foreseeable future? No.”
Glasgow has 2 clubs and as much as its been extremely loud at Parkhead, down at Ibrox the temperature has been much more of a tepid one, it was 14th Position for Rangers last season that’s meant they have at least retained their DPT status for another season, however many fans of the Gers will have been hoping Burrows would be more active in the market to try and move his side on, the fact that so many stars have arrived at Parkhead this off season has made the disappointment even more rife with the supporters, many expected Czech Superstar Adam Hlozek to be moved on in order to help boost the squad in other areas, however that’s not happened and as much as holding onto Hlozek has been the only highlight of Rangers transfer window, the fans were clearly expecting more, Bradwell was asked about his shared City rivals to which he said “Im not really going to pass too much comment on them, im not really interested in what they are on with and im sure they aren’t that fussed about us, the 2 games we will play against each other this season will be as tense and fierce as the old firm derby always is, they’ve been very quiet all off season, they haven’t improved and maybe they thought we would be the little dog coming up and yapping at their feet this season, obviously we have tooled ourselves up to make this a green and white city, that’s exactly what we will aim to do.”
One thing is very sure and that is this season is definitely going to be something for the history books.
Moving on to this season, you can see its all change, we were down at the training ground and you couldn’t turn around without seeing a new face on the playing staff, but we aren’t just talking about new faces we are talking about Stars, this past 2 months the green side of Celtic has been absolutely glowing, footballing royalty has arrived at Parkhead for the first time in 2 decades since Henrik Larsson donned the green and white hoops of Celtic, this time, Bradwell has gone bigger than big and had a transfer window to remember, by not bringing in just one star, but a team of Stars, Mo Salah, Heung Min Son, Jack Grealish, Virgil van Dijk, Enzo Fernandez, Christian Romero, Christopher Nkunku and Kalvin Phillips to name 9 of the superstars that have been brough into Celtic Park in what can only be described as ‘If Carling did transfer windows…..’
A Celtic side that at one stage looked like it could fizzle out and wonders of how would that team fair coming into a ferociously tough EFL 1 division and all the glitz and glamour that comes with it, well Celtic fans will be extremely optimistic about the season ahead, as the recent crop of transfers seems to have propelled Celtic from the conversation of, will they survive in their first season back?… to… could they knock on the door and fight for a Champions League spot? The amount of star power next season means that they very much will once again be favourites to win and retain the DB Cup, there also a dark horse in the running to bring home the EFL Cup, mixed in with competing for the Champions League positions, the excitement is completely understandable, Bradwell said to reporters after his side qualified for the knockouts of the pre season tournament yesterday, “Wow, what an off season, what a team and what a set of lads, already they are impressing me, the quality levels are through the roof and I can already say quality wise this is the best team ive ever coached, I watched us rip apart Arsenal 2 nights ago and wonder how we didn’t win, the fans should be excited, we will cause a lot of problems this season and it wont take long for a few to sit back and think, ok we need to put a bit more thought into this one when we play them, that’s a great feeling to have, I have been in this game a long time and its nice to look at this team and think ive finally got a side worthy of being in the conversation.”
Celtic have drawn Real Madrid in the first knockout round of the pre season tournament and Bradwell has said he doesn’t want to give anything away to the Galacticos on what they could expect from his side during the season and therefore will likely try something different out for todays game, when asked what he thought about the pre season tournament so far, Bradwell said “Its been fun, I wasn’t sure I wanted to enter, I thought about keeping everything under wraps until opening night of the season, but we have effectively bought a new team and I thought as much as these lads are top professionals and should easily adapt to playing with each other, minutes on the pitch for me to look at the lads and see their qualities and how they play together was the deciding factor and the group stage of the tournament very much proved that, im not expecting much today but its always nice to see Steve Talbot on the sidelines, Im sure there will be a conversation or two between us over the course.”
There are still plenty of sceptics that suggest Bradwell will have a whole new set of faces come game 5 of the season as Bradwell is known for not being able to help himself when it comes to dabbling in the transfer market, but Bradwells answer to that was “I think ive made it, its never been about doing deals for the sake of it although it might look like it, its always been about trading up and trading down simultaneously in order to trade back up for better than what was there, I think there was still plenty of that to be done here at Celtic and I envisioned at the end of the season a tough challenge and a case of well if we can try and get into the back end of the DPT places id be happy with that, we had a very mismatched side at the end of last season, with only one out and out midfielder in the squad, this off season opportunities came up where teams valued certain things over others and opted for different approaches, those opportunities gave us the ability to act and move this squad on leaps and bounds, I’m not saying we had a bad team but what’s come out of the other end of the factory is a Rolls Royce compared to what we had going in, now we are setup, there’s no trading down, definitely not this season, obviously some of our stars are in and around that 29-31 age gap and those players are in their prime for at least the next 2/3 seasons, will there be another overhaul at some point? Yes of course, will it be in the foreseeable future? No.”
Glasgow has 2 clubs and as much as its been extremely loud at Parkhead, down at Ibrox the temperature has been much more of a tepid one, it was 14th Position for Rangers last season that’s meant they have at least retained their DPT status for another season, however many fans of the Gers will have been hoping Burrows would be more active in the market to try and move his side on, the fact that so many stars have arrived at Parkhead this off season has made the disappointment even more rife with the supporters, many expected Czech Superstar Adam Hlozek to be moved on in order to help boost the squad in other areas, however that’s not happened and as much as holding onto Hlozek has been the only highlight of Rangers transfer window, the fans were clearly expecting more, Bradwell was asked about his shared City rivals to which he said “Im not really going to pass too much comment on them, im not really interested in what they are on with and im sure they aren’t that fussed about us, the 2 games we will play against each other this season will be as tense and fierce as the old firm derby always is, they’ve been very quiet all off season, they haven’t improved and maybe they thought we would be the little dog coming up and yapping at their feet this season, obviously we have tooled ourselves up to make this a green and white city, that’s exactly what we will aim to do.”
One thing is very sure and that is this season is definitely going to be something for the history books.
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