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Brendan Rodgers has been Celtic boss now for little over two months, and in that time it’s probably fair to say there have been major changes at every level at the club. I don’t think it’s too early to take a look at the things he’s done and what difference he’s made at the club.
I want to focus on five areas; transfer policy, squad building, the playing system, supporter engagement and overall leadership. These are the key areas where I think we’ve already seen something significant and where I expect further improvements as we go on.
No manager can change everything in such a short time; it’s entirely possible that we’ll not see the best of Brendan Rodgers or his team until we’re into our second season, but the improvement thus far has been marked enough that we can examine the changes as they stand right now.
Transfer Policy
Already the signs here are very, very good indeed.
Brendan has brought in four players to augment the current crop of first team players, and each one of them offers us something important.
Kolo Toure was exactly what we needed at centre back, a top class footballer who might be in his mid-thirties but has shown over the whole of his career that he is a model pro and who looks as fit as anyone in the first team squad. His experience is second to none, and he will bring a tremendous sense of calm to our back four, in addition to how he will influence the younger players, who will learn more playing alongside a guy like this than they have thus far in their careers.
On the surface of it, Moussa Dembele looks as if he’s the closest to being a prototype Celtic signing from the past few years, but this is misleading because he’s only 19. Dembele has already had two seasons at a much higher level than the SPL, playing in the English Championship where he showed the very real qualities he already had about his game. He was highly sought-after and Tottenham were particularly disappointed with his decision to opt for Celtic Park. It was a really coup to get this kid, and most especially because we secured his signature without having to part with big money. He already looks like a tremendous acquisition, with strength, pace, good feet and a coolness under pressure we saw clearly with his penalty against Astana.
Dorus De Vries has been brought in today to provide Craig Gordon with the competition he needs for the goalkeepers jersey. He has vast footballing experience, including a spell here in Scotland early in his career, and at 35 will clearly not be a long term option … but his is an important purchase nonetheless because it is the one that sends out the loudest message to those already in the squad, that no position is safe, that no-one can take his place for granted. This was a signing that took many people by surprise; it’s the sign that Brendan misses nothing.
Scott Sinclair is clearly the pick of the bunch though, a player of immense quality which could be surmised by the transfers he secured to two of the biggest clubs in England. Although he wasn’t able to crack their first team squads, with all the vast talents in those, he showed at both Swansea and Villa what he was capable of. At the Welsh club he worked with Brendan Rodgers for what proved to be the most fruitful period of his career thus far, and was a blazing success. I was tremendously excited about this one, and still can’t quite believe we secured a footballer of his talents. He will be a fans favourite in no time at all, and will entertain us in ways no player has in years. This is the 24 Carat Ambition signing, the one that excites me about the future, and to cap it all off he’s started with a bang, and already looks a cut above the rest.
These four signings are a radical departure from the policies which were pursued under Neil Lennon and Ronny Deila both. Two are 35. Sinclair is 27 and is on a four year contract. These guys have been brought in to improve the team, not for their re-sale value. The only player who could have fitted into the previous strategy was Dembele, but it’s clear the manager sees him as a key piece of the jigsaw in a long term project, even moving Leigh Griffiths from his natural position to accommodate him. These aren’t project players in the traditional sense.
They’re Brendan Rodgers Project players … but that’s not even close to being the same thing.
Squad Building
There were severe imbalances in the Celtic squad that Brendan Rodgers inherited.
The footballers he’s added have fixed some of the problems but not others. We had a team that was overburdened by midfield players whilst leaving us short of forwards, wide players and, crucially, key defensive areas. We still need a right back, many (myself included) think we still need a ball winning defensive midfielder and one other player up top. The right back appears to be a priority with several names being linked with that slot, including Callum Paterson of Hearts, and another striker has been rumoured on various forums and in the news.
On the other side, Scott Allan has been allowed to go away on loan.
Fringe players like Cole and Kazim Richards have been jettisoned.
At least one midfielder – believed to be Stefan Johansen – is expected to depart in this window, reducing that area of the pitch to a core group of players including Rogic, Brown, Armstrong, McGregor and Bitton. The first of these, the big Australian, has been given a new deal in a move that has surprised a lot of people and so too has James Forrest, suggesting that perhaps we might see the departure of Gary Mackay Steven.
Brendan will take this time to make some decisions. Others were a no brainer. One thing is clear enough though; this time next year the team here will have a very different look to the one we’re watching currently. That’s all to the good.
The Playing System
Here, already, the difference is night and day.
It’s quite incredible to think that we’ve already seen more tactical flexibility from Brendan in a few weeks than we did from Ronny in two full seasons. For all I admired Ronny as a man and thought he had a lot of progressive ideas about football and the culture surrounding it, the big problem and the one that finally did for him was that he seemed to be wedded to a single tactical approach, making us predictable and stale at times.
There are no such issues here. Brendan Rodgers has alternated between 3,4 and even 5 at the back.
He’s played three man central midfields, three man forward lines, played full backs on the wing, used high pressing, man for man marking and counter attacking systems, sometimes changing them mid-game. Against Hearts he went three at the back when we needed a goal and then went to a back four again after we’d scored it.
This is what the man is about and this is what we’ve been missing as a club for a long, long time.
On Wednesday night against Motherwell, missing half a dozen key players, we played with a freedom and confidence I haven’t seen in a Celtic team since the Tommy Burns teams. We were quite simply magnificent; only their goalkeeper stopped us running up a double digit score line and it would not have flattered us had we done it.
This, even more than the signings, is perhaps the most exciting thing about the Brendan Rodgers revolution thus far.
We’re finally unpredictable again and that makes us doubly dangerous.
Supporter Engagement
This is another area where Brendan hasn’t yet got fully up to speed, but one thing is absolutely without question; the fans are right behind him and have bought, fully, into what he’s trying to build. The stands are filling up, the season tickets have been all sold out and the troops are spending their money and getting behind the team.
This stuff would have been unthinkable at the end of last season, when disillusionment was at a peak I’ve not seen it since the old board was swept away in the mid nineties.
Exaggeration? Not even a little.
Our board purely and simply had to get the managerial appointment right and that they went out and brought a guy like Brendan Rodgers to the club will be to their immense, eternal, credit. If he’s backed to the extent he ought to be that will erase a multitude of sins in the eyes of many fans and be one in the win column that will allow some people to depart in their own time with their reputations intact. The feel-good factor has been restored; they make this the homerun hit of all time by giving this guy the resources he asks for, and trusting the fans to respond in kind.
Not since Martin was in charge has a single appointment so transformed the mood around Celtic Park.
The fans are loving every second of it.
Brendan is one of us. He doesn’t have to communicate to us every week, but already he’s said some things we’ve all stopped to listen to. When he talked recently about patience I think many of us did a little self evaluation on that score. When he said what he wants to do with the team first is work on their mental acuity we understood that this is one of the things Ronny was worried about but didn’t know how to fix; Brendan clearly wants to knock the right attitudes into people and, fair or not, the players are more inclined to listen to him than they were the Norwegian, because Brendan came here with a reputation that gave him instant respect.
So engagement with the supporters is limited at the moment, but then we already know what we need to know about his affection for Celtic and that we’re all on the same page here. That was another thing Ronny never had … sad as that fact is. Maybe time and successes would have changed it but Brendan came here already steeped in this and that advantage is not insignificant. The number of our fans who turned up for his unveiling was extraordinary … and telling.
There is no question that the supporters are on board all the way.
Overall Leadership
As I said in the previous section, Brendan got to Celtic Park with a reputation that guaranteed him respect the moment he walked into the dressing room; we needed that, to have a genuine leader in there, a man who could command a group of multi-millionaires and impose himself on them.
There is no doubt whatsoever that he is such a man; you only have to listen to the way players talk about him, including those who’ve signed new deals.
But it’s there in everything he’s doing at the moment, from the way he’s changed transfer policy, to the way he’s adopted new tactics, right down to the players he’s allowed to leave the club. The signing of De Vries is a message to every player that nobody gets a free pass, as was leaving Kris Commons out of the European squad.
There’s a certain amount of ruthlessness that’s needed in a job like this one and he definitely has the ability to take big decisions which surprise and disappoint people.
Ask Charlie Mulgrew, who was the earliest Rodgers casualty.
This guy has brought a vision to Celtic; he isn’t developing one or making it up as he goes. You get the impression that it’s been there all along, waiting for the right club, the right circumstances, the right historical moment.
He could have done it at Swansea but they were never going to be challenging for top honours, with the best will in the world.
Liverpool was where he first put his grand design into effect and but for a dreadful Steven Gerrard mistake against Palace and easily the most negative tactics I’ve ever seen in years of watching football, from Jose Mourinho and Chelsea, he would still be at Anfield, an unchallengeable legend.
Watching his Liverpool team that night I felt dreadfully sorry for him and his team, and furious at the appalling cynicism of Chelsea’s performance, but looking back at it now I see clearly the path of the future, setting itself out.
That night brought him to Celtic Park, like it was meant to be, and it’s here that his full vision will be set out and finally realised … to our enormous benefit.
He will be that legend here.
In Brendan We Trust.
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