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Rodgers Tries Too Hard To Mend The Damage He’s Done With Celtic Fans. He Should Quit It.

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Brendan Rodgers is in the papers again today, I see, and engaging in yet more revisionism.

How happy Leicester fans must be to read that he thinks he went to a smaller club.

How unimpressed Celtic fans are that he’s realised what was obvious to all of us.

On top of that, he seems to be claiming that he brought professionalism to Celtic Park, and “created a culture” there.

Perhaps he didn’t notice that the professionalism preceded him. Perhaps he’s unaware of the culture that already existed.

Why does Rodgers continue to do this? What’s his game?

Does he think this stuff helps him? It doesn’t, because it doesn’t matter now what Rodgers says, the damage was done on the day he scuttled out the door. His reputation with our supporters took a fatal hit. There was no recovering from it.

That man is not going to be forgiven for the way in which he left and there is nothing he can say to change that simple fact.

Most Celtic fans do not trust a word that comes out of his mouth. Leicester fans shouldn’t either.

In talking about wanting to test himself at a higher level, he’s giving the first tacit admission that he’ll be out the door of their club when the first reasonable offer comes along, and in accepting that they are a smaller club than Celtic he’s hinting that he wants to work on a bigger stage than they are … this is all Rodgers promoting Rodgers.

Having seen it with our own eyes, we’d recognise it a mile away.

On top of that, even when he’s trying really hard to re-ingratiate himself with our fans and our club he can’t help but push his own legend at the same time, and this is what grates as much as anything does. If this guy could shut his mouth about how brilliant he is, does he think we’d forget the titles, trophies and trebles?

Of course we wouldn’t.

But his constant efforts to paint himself as the Father of Modern Celtic are an insult to Neil Lennon, Ronny Deila and others.

To play down their own professionalism and their own achievements is just like Rodgers.

He ignores the successes that came before him and tries to lay a claim to those which came after he left.

It makes him sound like a grasping egotist … fitting since we all know that’s exactly what he is.

What it doesn’t do is help mend fences.

Everything about the way he left Celtic Park was shabby and dishonest.

It’s clear now that he was talking to Leicester for many months, during which time he was pretending to be committed to the Celtic cause, and when they still had a manager fighting for his job. That’s the mark of a man who simply doesn’t see other anything else in his way, and it may be that, in part, that makes him such a good football boss, but it points to major failings as a human being.

It’s clear too that his desperate desire to restore his position as a star of the Celtic support has more to do with his own self-image than anything else; he simply cannot wrap his brain around the idea that he’s not worshiped as a hero at the club where he achieved so much.

It messes with his internal radar like nothing ever has or will again.

But this is his own fault, and he has done nothing to improve his position with interviews like the one where he’s said all this.

Celtic fans are tired of his constant attempts to justify himself.

We know he left for the money and to put himself in a bigger spotlight … all the rest is flannel and if he had a fraction of self-awareness he’d chuck it and stop embarrassing himself.

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In the 1951/52 season, SFA chairman George Graham tried to stop Celtic from flying the Irish tricolour flag over Celtic Park, leading to a bitter stand off between him and the club. Which Scottish club backed Graham over his stance?

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