What would constitute the perfect end to a tumultuous season for Brendan Rodgers?
Given how it looks right now, you’d say it’s leading the torch and pitchfork brigade all the way up The Celtic Way to the front door of Parkhead and standing in front of the throng — legs splayed, Cristiano Ronaldo-style — with the league title raised with one hand and the vickies getting flicked at the suits upstairs with the other.
The Brodge might have stated during his spot of Friday flamethrowing that he’d actually rather like to stay at the champions longer, that he’d like to agree a new contract as long as everyone agrees he gets to do exactly as he wants.
Don’t be putting the house on that happening. It is war in Paradise now and it is hard to think that this can possibly go on for another eight months without something breaking. Badly.
Plenty has been said and written about the absolute shambles of the transfer window just gone — not to mention the one before that, and the one before that, now we’re at it — as well as the myriad failings of the tired, dysfunctional ‘leadership’ model of the club.
None of it, though, had the same impact as Rodgers’ absolute excoriation of everything that has brought Celtic — rolling in money and other advantages — to the situation where their squad is so very obviously weaker than it was this time last year and their fans are ready to raze the place to the ground.
Brendan Rodgers admitted that he was left feeling ’empty’ by the transfer window debacle
Rodgers took a carefully-aimed flamethrower to the situation during a pre-game press call
Celtic power couple Lawwell and Desmond have an unhappy manager on their hands
It would have reflected badly on the manager had he backed down and toed the party line when reflecting on the events of the past few weeks and, by Jove, he certainly didn’t do that. If anything, his carefully chosen words felt like a challenge to major shareholder — and de facto top banana — Dermot Desmond to sack him or just suck it up.
And that’s where it looks like we are now. In a stand-off. A gunfight at the anything-but-OK Corral. Where everyone is waiting to see who blinks first.
It certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to be Rodgers. Most folk would have understood if he’d opted to head off elsewhere after having his wishes ignored in the window. You know, line up something else for a few months down the line, reach a mutual agreement, leave with the punters behind him, and drip a wee bit of poison into the well on the way out for the benefit of those in the directors’ box who don’t share his vision.
It would have delivered lovely entertainment in the short-term, of course. The road he opted to start travelling down on Friday, though, could run for months and months. Even though, in any sane place of business, it is completely untenable.
Of the many, many things Rodgers said that were capable of commandeering banner headlines, common consensus was that the most explosive centred on branding the person guilty of briefing against him in a national newspaper ‘cowardly’ and expressing the view they should resign. For high treason, presumably.
It’s brilliant stuff. Netflix material. Certainly more engaging than anything witnessed on the pitch of late.
Rodgers in happier times alongside Lawwell and Nicholson on his return to the club
The guessing-game is already going full-pelt to deduce who the ‘senior figure’ who accused him of tearing the place apart and engineering his exit is — and most fingers seem to point in the same direction.
Never the party-poopers, we won’t spoil the fun here. Rodgers spoke of how well he gets on with Desmond and how CEO Michael ‘Mr Invisible’ Nicholson and finance bod Chris McKay are ‘good guys’, so let’s just say it doesn’t leave many others in the frame unless the likes of Sharon Brown or Brian Rose — lucky to get recognised even in their own back gardens — have suddenly decided this is their moment to shine.
There’s just one thing being missed here, though. Does anyone really think that the individual responsible for briefing against the manager was working alone? That something so incendiary would be put out there in the public realm without prior agreement?
Celtic put out a 1,000-word statement just before 9pm last Saturday — perfectly normal, just like all perfectly functioning corporations do — that addressed everything under the sun. Except that.
There have been no denials of that story. No obvious attempts to distance those in the upper echelons of the club from it. Nada. What does that tell you?
Celtic’s failure to get past Kairat Almaty in the Champions League play-off has sparked fury
That late-night, loony-tunes address to the nation pushed supporters feeling they couldn’t get any angrier at the running of their club to within an iota of spontaneous combustion. And not just those at Celtic.
Across Glasgow, Rangers followers look at the mess unfolding at their biggest rivals — this disintegrating blancmange now dripping off the dining table, ruining the carpet and taking the dog’s diabetes to breaking point — and talk about how a most unlikely title would be there for the winning were it not for the fact Russell Martin’s in charge.
That statement made something else clear, though. Rodgers was talking on Friday about how he would be willing to stay as long as the club’s entire approach to the transfer market changed.
Erm, sorry, Brendan, but didn’t that ramble on the official website from Mr No-Name signpost the future direction of travel?
Nothing’s changing. Nothing’s wrong. Tutto sotto controllo. And send all complaints and requests for season-ticket refunds to the media, bloggers and the people who deal with FFP at UEFA.
Rodgers and the board are at loggerheads. There is no other conclusion to reach, given the meat and bones of his Friday conference. He accused them of being slow in the market and leaving him ‘empty’. He said he would have let Daizen Maeda leave if the place worked properly.
The supporters have made their feelings clear about Desmond, Lawwell and Nicholson
He made it clear it’s Groundhog Day. Transfers have fallen apart in the way they did before he jacked it in 2019. There are briefings against him like there were back then.
He slaughtered the club’s atrocious communications strategy. He admitted fans are right to think that the club were scrambling around desperately on deadline day trying to sign someone, anyone, at centre-forward. And the list went on. And on. And on.
It’s just a hunch, a touch of educated guesswork, but it’s not quite the stuff that has the high heid yins beating a path to your door to offer improved terms and conditions. Quite the opposite.
What needs to be considered, too, is that Rodgers is not exactly on solid ground. He blew nearly £40million last season on players who simply didn’t deliver. He’s been knocked out of the Champions League by the Kazakhstan Candle Factory’s works team. Fans, truth be told, are growing sick of the football on offer.
Celtic must be thankful that Rangers are in no position to take advantage under Russell Martin
Celtic must remain favourites to win the Premiership, but what happens if this firestorm looks like consuming everything? What happens if performances don’t improve, if fans keep protesting, if it looks like internal politics might put the title in jeopardy?
Rodgers might yet get his moment of redemption after everything that happened when he went to Leicester, of lifting a title despite boardroom mismanagement and walking off into the sunset as a hero with the more vocal elements of the fanbase.
He talks about thriving outside his comfort zone, creating challenges, never settling for the status quo.
He is certainly poking the bear here — and with a businessman like Desmond, it is a dangerous game to play. One best observed with a large consignment of popcorn.
