In the aftermath, after the last whistle sounded on Celtic’s dreary 0-0 draw with Kairat Almaty in the first leg of their Champions League play-off and when the strains of “sack the board” had died away, Brendan Rodgers sat down to talk.
There are times when a post-match news conference is far more box office than the 90 minutes that preceded it – and rarely has that been more true than in the east end of Glasgow on Wednesday.
Rodgers’ team had been largely awful; flat, uninspiring and unthreatening. This tie is in the balance now in a way that few people had expected.
The Celtic manager had two ways to go – bite his tongue about the holes in his squad and his board’s pedestrian attempts to fill them, or continue down the road he’s been on for a while now, doubling down on the message.
He chose the latter – and in many ways it was riveting and illuminating about where he is at with Celtic.
Where are the new signings? He said he could not answer that, meaning that it is a question for those above him – which, of course, it is.
But those above him do not speak about such things, so he is living a Groundhog Day existence on that front. Round and round he goes, where are the players, nobody knows.
He was asked, rather pointedly, if he thought the fans should have to accept the way the club is being run, the way they entered a key Champions League qualifier still not having replaced a departed icon Kyogo Furuhashi – who left for France in January – Nicolas Kuhn, a 21-goal winger who left in the summer for Como and Jota, the classy winger who will be out injured until next year.
“That’s not for me to answer,” said Rodgers. The subtext being, ‘go ask somebody who can answer it’.
As the questions came, the manager met each one with some loaded language. He said it was pretty clear for some time that Celtic were short of players and needed to do more in the market.
“It’s the lightest we’ve been in key areas of the pitch,” he remarked about their preparation for a tie of such magnitude, a £40m head-to-head with a team they were hot favourites to put away.
It was not hard to read between the lines and not hard to notice Rodgers’ discomfort. But just as it is legitimate to wonder where the new signings are and how the club’s ambition marries up with the ambition of the manager, it’s fair to point out Rodgers was not exactly down to the dregs on Wednesday.