Brendan Rodgers
didn’t have a press
conference as such at Celtic Park on Friday afternoon.
The spectacle looked, and sounded, more like a man being interviewed under caution. As if he was a suspect implicated in some kind of wrongdoing.
Anything you say may be written down and later used in evidence against you.
That kind of thing.
The caution also included the certainty that every word
Rodgers said on the record will be repeated in condemnation of the detainee – sorry, manager – if he has the audacity to leave Celtic Park before the expiry date on his contract.
But he stopped his
interrogators in their tracks with his “guarantee” that he would honour the terms of his new three-year agreement.
Now his detractors will have a long wait to see if they get the chance to say “I told you so” in the event of a sudden evacuation for a second time.
It was
candour on an extra-ordinary level from Rodgers because his reputation would be shot to pieces if he made an early exit. He has to stand by what he said or
forever be synonymous with deviousness.
The manager’s best soundbite was his assertion that Celtic are: “A club that allow you to dream but we have to be
unified. From this day forward, we stand united.”
The veracity of that statement needs to be established while there are dissenting voices among the support.
But Rodgers has challenged them to accept his regret over the hurt caused by leaving for Leicester City in 2019.
And in a subtle way he turned around the topic of allegiance to the club and put the onus on the fans to get behind the team and the man who picks it –or else it’s their devotion that is called into question
He didn’t apologise for
leaving four years ago – nor should he have done. The
temptation to say “stuff this for a game of soldiers” may not have crossed the mind of the man publicly crucified before he’d even appeared been paraded before fans as manager.
Brendan’s wage is an upgrade on the £2.5million he was on last time he was in the technical area at Celtic Park, after all, and that kind of money can ensure anger is a slow burn.
But there can never have been an introductory media
gathering where every
utterance was examined in such forensic detail to find ways to trip him up and provoke
confrontation.
I was waiting for him to have his fingerprints taken then told to pose for his mugshot.
Last time I looked, people changing jobs did
not constitute criminality leading to interrogation to find a motive.
What’s all this about, for heaven’s sake?
There’s more than a trace of hypocrisy over Rodgers’ return.
Some Celtic fans were revelling in the pursuit of a man who is there, don’t forget, to do them a favour in the hour of need after Ange Postecoglou’s departure for London.
Ange got the Big Smoke. Brendan got his feet held to the fire.
When Postecoglou came here two years ago the fans with podcasts used his initial press conference to tell him the
mainstream media were not his friends then reassure him they were his only true allies.
There appears to have been a shift in attitude where
Rodgers is concerned.
As a former Celtic manager, Gordon Strachan used to say criticism of him, or anybody else, was no problem.
It was the quality of the
criticism, and the calibre of the critics, that gave rise to
objection. Was the criticism valid or vindictive?
It’s a question Rodgers would have been entitled to ask
himself in his private moments.
When Rangers won their only European trophy in 1972 they failed to win the league title the same season.
Nobody batted an eyelid because the world then was a relatively normal place.
The impression given recently has been if Rodgers won the Champions League next
season – but Rangers finished above his team at domestic level – there would be repercussions because the world’s a different place now.
What’s it coming to when family members are trotted out to vouch for Rodgers’
affection for Celtic?
I would have understood the character assassination if Brendan had returned to
Glasgow to manage Rangers.
But trying to beat a
confession out of the man because he allegedly behaved fraudulently when it came to an allegiance that wasn’t as much an affair of the heart as he had made out?
Give me peace.
Postecoglou’s catchphrase was: “We never stop.”
The Green Brigade’s stance relative to Rodgers is: “We never shut up.”
They are the self-appointed guardians of their club’s
conscience, which is laughable given the fact they’ve cost Celtic literally £100,000s in fines from UEFA for various forms of anti-social behaviour.
There could surely be no objection to that observation, could there? If you give it out, you surely have to take some back, don’t you?
They’re a song and dance act. A good one in terms of
creating an atmosphere at Celtic Park – but a song and dance act nevertheless. Clubs don’t need guardians of their conscience. They need to win and keep the season tickets holders satisfied.
This is where Rodgers comes in. He doesn’t need endorsement from supporter groups. He needs to justify the lengths to which Dermot Desmond has gone to bring him back.
If the club are bigger than any individual then Rodgers is a servant of the club’s needs for as long as the arrangement suits both parties
To paraphrase Jock Stein, the game is a dead loss without fans – but there’s no class system that makes one group more important than another.
The goodwill in Brendan’s account might have been
emptied but his credit is still good. And you can take his promises to the bank.
What more do
people want?
Like the man said, you can
only shift
opinion through football.
