Our man Hugh Keevins has had his say on the situation surrounding the Hoops gaffer at Parkhead
Veteran sportswriter and broadcaster with a distinctive style. A boxing expert as well as a football writer and columnist for the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, Hugh also presents Clyde 1 FM’s Superscoreboard show.
Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers
I must admit I’m baffled why Brendan Rodgers will be in the dugout when Celtic play at Kilmarnock.
The manager admitted at his pre-match press conference on Friday that he knew a newspaper story had been planted last weekend to discredit him.
And he revealed it isn’t the first time someone at the club he works for had briefed against him.
On the first occasion it happened, Rodgers felt so let down he left for Leicester City.
This time he accused the perpetrator of cowardice but then spoke about his willingness to extend his contract with Celtic beyond this season.
I don’t follow the logic behind that line of thinking.
I need a behavioural psychologist to advise me why you would want to work for an organisation where a senior member of the hierarchy suggested, incorrectly as it turns out, that you were trying to engineer a way out of the club.
Rodgers might claim not to know the identity of the person who did the dirty on him – but half the city of Glasgow would, I imagine, be able to tell him on request.
The manager also used his press conference to catalogue a series of mistakes made with regard to transfers during the summer window that ended with Celtic signing two players, Michel-Ange Balikwisha and Seb Tounekti from Royal Antwerp and Hammarby, respectively.
But they only cost a combined total of £10million after an understrength Celtic had gone out of the Champions League at the hands of Kairat Almaty in Kazakhstan, costing the club four times that amount of money in lost revenue
Rodgers went through Celtic’s Greatest Hits when it came to maladministration as it applied to recruitment and the treatment of players like Daizen Maeda, who has apparently been trying to get out of Celtic Park for the last six months but is suffering from the recruitment department’s dilatory response to finding a replacement, saying the cumulative effect of those failings had left him “empty”.
But not so empty he wouldn’t accept a new deal after the insertion of conditions that would allow him to work the best he can.
Presumably those conditions would involve the manager having a more hands-on approach when it came to transfer windows.
And the removal of the negative influence who has been spreading non-truths about him.
All will become clear in the next couple of weeks, apparently, which might mean there’s a high-profile removal on the way.
Perhaps Dermot Desmond, Celtic’s principal shareholder, will heed the advice of former director Brian Dempsey and get here quickly to explain what the hell is going on.
Ex-Celtic Director Brian Dempsey alongside Hugh Keevins
Where all of this leaves a mutinous support, set to break new ground in the field of toxicology at Rugby Park today, will only be known once they get there and stage their pre-planned forms of disruption.
They might, I suspect, have thought Rodgers could have been more supportive of them in their fight against whoever wrote what they described as last weekend’s “cold and clinical” statement concerning transfer policy.
The fans say the relationship between club and supporters has to be more than “transactional”.
Rodgers, though, gave them platitudes about coming together and fighting for one cause because that is the power of Celtic
It sounded like propping up the club’s current regime, regardless of how he has been treated on a personal level.
Nobody mentioned the football.
They will get round to that subject pretty quickly if Kilmarnock win on Sunday afternoon.
If you think the internal warfare is bad just now, you will have seen nothing yet, pandemonium-wise, if Killie deliver another humiliating blow.