The media never lets up, do they? They’re at it again, pulling more nonsense out of the fire, more anti-Celtic shtick. Anything to try and derail our momentum ahead of tomorrow. This time the intent is clear, to question whether Brendan Rodgers was actually our second choice.
I’ve often wondered, does this strategy ever actually work?
Now, they probably won’t go the whole hog here and ask Rodgers how it feels to have been appointed because our “number one target” said no – if you believe that’s what happened – but that’s not the intention.
The intention is to plant a seed of doubt in his mind.
But I ask again; does this strategy ever work? I mean, Rodgers is in the job. He’s there. He’s at a world footballing institution. He’d need to be pretty insecure to let a complete non-issue like that take anything away from where he is and what he can do here.
He also knows, I suspect, that this is nonsense.
There are two key reasons why this story is a complete non-starter.
First up, let’s give everyone involved in it the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say the media asked a straight question here and not a loaded one.
Now, let’s say further that Moyes gave an honest answer. I doubt both of those things, and I’ll tell you why in a minute, but let’s say they’re the truth.
In that case, Moyes has a big mouth, no respect for our club and a complete lack of class. A guy like that, we’re better off without. He would have revealed confidential discussions. He would have publicly dissed our club, in a way that might have cut the legs from under our manager on the eve of a big game. Perhaps he didn’t think about it before he answered, but in that case we’re dealing with an idiot who needs some more media training.
I wouldn’t want a guy like that near Celtic Park.
It would also be a suggestion that he sees England as the be all and end all, that he somehow thinks there’s more virtue in a relegation dogfight there than trying to win trophies and make history at Celtic. I’d call that a lack of ambition, to go with a lack of class.
Once again, that’d be someone I wouldn’t want at Celtic Park.
But you know something? I don’t think there’s a modicum of truth in what I just wrote. Moyes isn’t a classless guy, or one who lacks ambition, and no English journalist cares enough to have asked a straight up question about Celtic during a press conference unveiling him as the manager of an EPL side. Their own wee world is all they care about.
No, this was a loaded question from a Scottish hack, and whilst I don’t know the exact way they phrased it I can guess enough. The English writers must have been shaking their heads here, knowing exactly what was going on. Pure headline chasing, if not a blatant attempt to cause problems for Moyes and Rodgers both.
I found Moyes answer instructive. For one thing, he’s not said when Celtic made their alleged approaches. He hasn’t even confirmed that they were made with this particular managerial vacancy in mind. He hasn’t spoken about the detail of them, whether they were “feeling out” sessions or actual proposals, where a job was offered. Interest gauging is one thing. Someone actually saying “the job is yours for the taking” and opening talks formally is a different thing again.
My guess is that there was some informal contact, as there must have been to many different people. If Moyes is to be believed there was more contact than a simple “feeling out” session. What does that tell you? It tells me that the club’s initial approach, however that was made, wasn’t exactly strongly rebuffed. In other words, Moyes was interested, as any number of people could have told you at the time. So what happened?
Brendan Rodgers came along, that’s what. Celtic said when they unveiled the Irishman that they knew he was the man as soon as they spoke with him. What started out as a “feeling him out” session became a concrete offer, and my information is that it was the one and only concrete offer the club ever actually put on the table.
Moyes never got one, and I think – no, I know – that had to hurt.
What makes the Scottish hack’s loaded question particularly sneaky is that Moyes was never going to confirm, for a second, that he would have taken the Celtic job whilst he sat in Sunderland’s press room. That makes them the second choice. This “I wanted to manage again in England” is, I think, little more than his assuaging his own lingering sense of regret at not being sat at Celtic Park instead. I don’t believe that his comments were said yesterday out of spite, or even hurt; David Moyes was protecting his new employers from negative headlines and he was also guarding his own reputation. They are both wholly understandable.
These were the cheapest of cheap shots, probably from a hack who already knows the facts and knew Moyes wasn’t going to sit there and tell the world that he was the one who’d been overlooked for the Parkhead post. It was a deeply cynical move against a good and decent man, one who in many ways must have felt immense frustration at the unbelievable trajectory of his own career as it stands at the moment. Sunderland is a managerial graveyard. If he leaves of his own volition, to go to a better club, I’ll be frankly astonished; they’ve carried the reek of mediocrity for years. He will be their fifteenth manager in ten years.
So don’t pay a blind bit of notice to this transparent media nonsense. David Moyes didn’t snub Celtic any more than Celtic snubbed him. No concrete offer was ever made, although pre-emptory discussions were most definitely held, as they were with others. But when Brendan came along that was it. He ticked all the boxes, and in the end we got our man.
Good luck to David Moyes at Sunderland. Every member of the Celtic Family wishes this guy well, because he’s a good bloke and a better manager than his circumstances would suggest. Right now he’s in managerial Hell, but it won’t last. The Sunderland affair will not end in triumph but in tears, but that’s the club, not the man.
I still think he will be a top, top boss.
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