{"id":148801,"date":"2025-10-28T02:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T02:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/148801\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T02:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T02:22:08","slug":"brendan-rodgers-resigns-as-celtic-manager-martin-oneill-takes-temporary-charge-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/148801\/","title":{"rendered":"Brendan Rodgers resigns as Celtic manager, Martin O\u2019Neill takes temporary charge \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The scale of recent disharmony inside Celtic<\/a> has come to light with the resignation of Brendan Rodgers<\/a>. By way of immediate response the club\u2019s main \u2013 and typically publicity-shy \u2013 shareholder, Dermot Desmond, has remarkably criticsed what he branded \u201cself-serving\u201d behaviour by Rodgers. In a further dramatic twist and two decades after leaving the club, Martin O\u2019Neill will return to take charge of Celtic on an interim basis.<\/p>\n

Celtic confirmed Rodgers had left his position shortly before 10pm on Monday. Former Republic of Ireland manager O\u2019Neill, assisted by Shaun Maloney, will preside over Wednesday\u2019s visit of Falkirk to Celtic Park and probably the League Cup semi-final against Rangers on Sunday. Celtic are likely to at least assess the situation of Ange Postecoglou, another of their former managers, who left Nottingham Forest earlier this month.<\/p>\n

It will, however, take considerable time for dust to settle on the circumstances behind Rodgers\u2019s exit. His final match was Sunday\u2019s 3-1 defeat against Hearts at Tynecastle, which leaves Celtic eight points from the summit of Scotland\u2019s top flight. Rodgers had made plain his disquiet over a lack of summer transfer activity, sentiment his paymasters clearly believe fuelled supporter protests aimed at the board.<\/p>\n

Within 15 minutes of Celtic\u2019s official statement on Rodgers, Desmond issued a hard-hitting one of his own. \u201cI want to acknowledge Brendan\u2019s contribution across his two spells as manager, during which he helped deliver success that forms part of the club\u2019s modern history,\u201d said the Irish tycoon. \u201cHowever, I must also express my deep disappointment at the way the past several months have unfolded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we brought Brendan back to Celtic two years ago, it was done with complete trust and belief in his ability to lead the club into a new era of sustained success. Unfortunately, his conduct and communication in recent months have not reflected that trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn June, both [the chief executive] Michael Nicholson and I expressed to Brendan that we were keen to offer him a contract extension, to reaffirm the club\u2019s full backing and long-term commitment to him. He said he would need to think about it. Yet in subsequent press conferences, Brendan implied that the club had made no commitment to offer him a contract. That was simply untrue.\u201d There appeared little chance of Rodgers extending his deal, which was due to end next summer.<\/p>\n

Desmond added: \u201cEvery player signed and every player sold during his tenure was done so with Brendan\u2019s full knowledge, approval, and endorsement. Any insinuation otherwise is absolutely false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desmond insisted Rodgers was \u201cgiven final say over all football matters\u201d and disputed Celtic\u2019s transfer approach has been poor. \u201cWhen his comments were made publicly, I sought to address them directly,\u201d said Desmond. \u201cBrendan and I met for over three hours at his home in Scotland to discuss the issue. Despite ample opportunity, he was unable to identify a single instance where the club had obstructed or failed to support him. The facts did not match his public narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegrettably, his words and actions since then have been divisive, misleading and self-serving. They have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and fuelled hostility towards members of the executive team and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unwarranted and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the loss at Hearts, Rodgers denied shifting the blame on to others. \u201cI\u2019ve always taken responsibility,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s never been a time that I haven\u2019t. When you\u2019re the manager at Celtic, you\u2019re responsible for the results, despite whatever else happens. So that responsibility is on me.\u201d – Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The scale of recent disharmony inside Celtic has come to light with the resignation of Brendan Rodgers. By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,1191,20992,16512,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,87513,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-148801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-brendan-rodgers","11":"tag-celtic","12":"tag-dermot-desmond","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-martin-o-neill","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115449413368520192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}