Across Scotland’s sun-soaked beer gardens this week, there will have been a Celtic fan or two on the defensive.
Time between gulps of pints may just have shrunk dramatically under pressure as pals not of a green and white persuasion posed the pertinent question: ‘How come you’re so pro-Brendan all of a sudden?’
In between having old, poorly ageing social media rants thrown in their faces, there will no doubt have been pleas to understand that it is not quite that simple. And it isn’t, really.
Mind you, I do think fans of other clubs are justified in enjoying their mates being forced into a bit of: ‘Can I just shock you? I’ve always liked him, despite the tone and content of those 47 tweets from February 2019 suggesting otherwise.’ It has been a little surreal witnessing a biblical flood of Brodge nostalgia rise up of late, almost enough to trick you into thinking you’ve woken up in 2016, the presence of Donald Trump on the TV doing little to dissipate a sense that somebody, somewhere has hit the big rewind button.
However, I have checked and checked again – this is 2023, Brendan Rodgers is about to become the Celtic manager once more, and Celtic fans are largely OK with that.
So, how did we get here? Even when it was becoming increasingly clear - despite his own steadfast insistence - that Ange Postecoglou was bound for Tottenham Hotspur and Rodgers was sitting around as a free agent, probably in this Majorcan stronghold we’ve heard so much about, few dared suggest a reunion. The initial noises from camp Brendan indicated his year’s sabbatical after losing his job at Leicester City was one he very much intended to stick to, anyway.
But there was a noticeable shift when it emerged Celtic had been in touch with their former manager, and that he was listening. By the time a green and white delegation led by chief-executive Michael Nicholson touched down at the Rodgers riviera in the Mediterranean, it was clear this rekindling of relations had moved far beyond a few tentative texts just for old time’s sake.
Suddenly, nobody was really talking about Kjetil Knutsen or Enzo Maresca anymore.
News of the in-person meeting reaching the public will have allowed Celtic and Rodgers to gauge just how the fanbase felt about all this, and they will surely have detected a significant thawing. How that thawing should be interpreted is up for debate, and Celtic supporters quickly found themselves being diagnosed with a curious case of collective amnesia.
Was even the slightest gnawing fear of surrendering their stranglehold on Scottish football’s silverware to Rangers really enough to induce complete forgiveness? This is a man who, if you were to overhear a Celtic fan crudely referencing an individual as ‘the rat’ these last four years, you’d need no further context as to who they were talking about. The strength of feeling over his departure for England really was that deep, and the reaction at the time is believed to have taken even Rodgers himself by surprise.
But what if there’s a bit more to this than football fans being characteristically fickle? What if the readiness to take Rodgers back is less mass memory loss and more sensible pragmatism?
His late-night goodbye for what was then a meandering mid-table Premier League side was not just unfathomable for punters in its timing, but in that he would leave Celtic behind for a smaller club, in terms of fanbase and history. However, in the intervening years it feels like Celtic supporters – and Rangers, for that matter – have become increasingly accepting of their place in modern football’s food chain. They are two gigantic fish in a very small pond, just a few hundred miles north of the veritable ocean that is the Premier League.
Rangers had the same bitter taste when Steven Gerrard abruptly upped sticks for Aston Villa without a second thought. Celtic could not compete with what English clubs were able to offer Kieran Tierney, Kristoffer Ajer, Odsonne Edouard and Ryan Christie. Until something drastic happens, this is the way of the football world in 2023.
That reality was further hammered home by Postecoglou departing for Spurs at the peak of his Celtic powers. When Rodgers walked, there was a growing unease between club and manager that few wanted to admit at the time, whereas it felt like the age of Ange could have run for as long as the Greek-Australia desired.
‘You can have it all but how much do you want it?’, Liam Gallagher once asked. The answer, time and again, has been not as much as what awaits south of the border.
And so, it seems that Postecoglou choosing north London may just have been a significant contributor in clearing the emotional decks for a Rodgers return. As it is with players, most Celtic fans are making peace with the fact that ambitious coaches like Postecoglou and Rodgers will not hang around in the SPFL for very long.
Celtic have long positioned themselves smartly as being able to offer young talent a gateway to the elite leagues in exchange for delivering silverware and a tidy transfer fee. It has taken a while, but the application of this same principle to managers is beginning to catch up.
In most cases, it is more difficult to lose a figurehead than it is a player who is often just one among many, but highly driven individuals will always seek to push themselves to the highest level possible, in any walk of life.
Football is more emotional than most walks of life, so perhaps Postecoglou has done Rodgers an inadvertent favour in pushing the perception that managers can have genuine affection for a club and still do what they feel is best for their careers. It’s not as cut-and-dry as saying ‘it’s just business’, although from that perspective it is once more understandable why Celtic fans would put their animosity towards Rodgers aside.
When it became clear the 50-year-old was a serious contender, it simultaneously became clear that he was the best man for the job. Rodgers delivered nothing but success on the pitch, rubbishing the idea that winning trebles was something that came around every few decades.
Yes, he ended up on an arduously slow march to the sack at Leicester, but prior to his transfer backing from their board drying up he won the club’s first-ever FA Cup and twice came within a whisker of Champions League qualification. There is no denying the Northern Irishman is a top-class manager.
Ill-feeling towards him in Glasgow’s east end was strong, but fans’ desire to see their club succeed tends to trump everything else. A willing and motivated Rodgers is Celtic’s best chance of that.
This is not to say that what happened in 2019 will be completely forgotten. If, as looks increasingly likely, he is appointed then how he chooses to address it will be fascinating. And you’d certainly think Celtic fans would insist they will enter into this reunion with eyes open, a little less susceptible to the Rodgers romanticisms they were previously seduced by.
All they will really want from him this time is more silverware and some long-awaited progress in Europe, and if the Premier League comes calling again in a few years, maybe everyone can shake hands and move on with some more trophies safely tucked away at Parkhead.
Will Celtic fans still take pelters from their mates down the pub this weekend, though? Most likely. But as they’ve come to realise elsewhere this past fortnight, that’s just the way of the world.
