Even before last season’s finishing line was in sight, speculation about who’d be in charge of Celtic a year from now had already started.
Brendan Rodgers’ admission back in May that he was longing for the summer recess on the back of another gruelling campaign did nothing to quell the notion that he’s eyeing a more prolonged rest from frontline management when his contract at Parkhead expires in 2026.
It’s a plan the Northern Irishman had in mind when he was sacked by Leicester City in 2023 only for the chance to return to Celtic Park to rear its head two months later.
Having caused merry hell by fleeing by the dark of night for the Midlands in 2019, he promised to fulfil the full term of his three-year contract second time around.
His place in Celtic folklore now secured after winning a further four trophies, he’s fully entitled to leave by the front door a year from now if he so chooses.
He’ll have clocked up five-and-a-half seasons across two spells by that point. Martin O’Neill did five years and Gordon Strachan bowed out at four.
Boss Brendan Rodgers says he has ‘touched base’ with Celtic about his future at the club
New arrival Benjamin Nygren joins in the hard work at Celtic’s training camp in Portugal
Hayato Inamuro is one of several new Celtic signings not expected to start games this season
You could hardly blame Rodgers if, at that point, he also feels he’s done his stint in Glasgow’s goldfish bowl. A fluent Spanish speaker, he might well feel the time is right to broaden his horizons after some time out.
If you were a betting man, you’d certainly be sticking your money on a harmonious parting of the ways at that juncture.
Speaking at the side’s pre-season training camp in Portugal the other night, Rodgers confirmed he’d held discussions over his future with key figures including Dermot Desmond.
While he’s never categorically ruled out staying beyond next summer, nor has he yet expressed a desire to do so — publicly at least.
‘We touched base on it,’ he said. ‘But it primarily was just a chat around things. Like I’ve said, it’s still a long, long way out.’
Be that as it may, but Rodgers —and his paymasters — know how this works.
No matter how they try to underplay it, any manager entering the final year of his contract represents uncertainty. And that’s the one thing football clubs do all they can to avoid.
It starts to dominate the agenda. It makes long-term planning difficult. It can also unsettle certain players.
You can well understand why many clubs down the years have gone down the road of ripping off the bandage and confirming what they’re whispering in the shadows.
But while this strategy does at least offer clarity and an end to the constant questioning, it’s also high risk.
Manuel Pellegrini believed his decision, in February 2016, to confirm he was soon to be making way for Pep Guardiola at Manchester City was the reason they fell from second place to fourth in the Premier League.
‘The most difficult thing in a group is when you break something,’ the Chilean ruefully reflected. ‘Something was broken in that moment.’
Almost eight years on, Jurgen Klopp’s shock announcement that he was leaving Liverpool didn’t exactly have the galvanising effect he wanted in the remainder of that campaign.
Although the Reds did win the League Cup, they finished third in the league behind City and Arsenal after shipping 17 points and exited the FA Cup and the Europa League to Manchester United and Atalanta respectively.
Much closer to home, Rangers will forever regret the decision to announce that Walter Smith was set to leave the club at the end of 1997-98 at their October AGM.
Rather than give the squad a sense of purpose as it sought to win a record 10th successive title, the move had the opposite effect.
With Dick Advocaat poised to move in, the form of several players including star man Brian Laudrup nosedived. Remarkably, only once that season did Rangers win four straight league games. The upshot was that Celtic pipped them to the title.
A generation on, Celtic will be aware of the inherent danger of starting the season with any sort of cloud hanging overhead.
The fact is that if there’s no change in the present situation, Rodgers will continue to be asked the same question week-in, week-out. If his mind is set on moving on, there will come a point when it feels right to make it known. The trouble is that neither scenario is exactly ideal.
It’s all a very good advert for one-year rolling contracts. While such arrangements don’t make speculation entirely disappear, it does tend to stay in the background with no big countdown to the contract’s end date.
If Rodgers was willing to look at this arrangement, it would appear to be the best way forward for all concerned.
No matter how taxing he’s found managing Celtic, he’s always been at pains to stress how much he and his family enjoy living in Glasgow. One more year before a stage-managed exit in 2027 would hardly be a sufferance.
But while much can change in the blink of an eye in football, there’s little so far this summer to indicate that that’s how it will pan out.
A year back, having called on his board to be ‘braver’ in the transfer market, Rodgers got Adam Idah and Arne Engels for a combined £20m. Paulo Bernardo came in for £3.4m with £6m spent on Auston Trusty.
It’s a different story thus far. Although Kieran Tierney is back at the club, the business done to date has been lower key. Benjamin Nygren will start games next season, but you’d be surprised if Ross Doohan, Callum Osmand or Hayato Inamura did so.
Rodgers still doesn’t have a direct replacement for Kyogo Furuhashi who departed for Rennes in January.
It’s not as if the club are strapped for cash. It just coined in a reported £16.5m from Como for Nicolas Kuhn and it’s no longer paying the wages of Greg Taylor, Maik Nawrocki or Gustaf Lagerbielke.
Might there be a reluctance on Celtic’s part to let their manager spend big on players who he may only work with for a season?
Similarly, you could be forgiven for wondering if the agents of some targets are wary of committing their clients to a club whose manager may soon be on the move.
In the here and now, Rodgers and his side next take on Sporting Lisbon in the Algarve tomorrow with a home game with Newcastle on Saturday coming before the Como Cup. The hope will be they aren’t still in a corridor of uncertainty when the real business starts.
