Isn’t our media wonderful?
Remember the Kris Commons stories, under both Neil Lennon and Ronny Deila? About how bust-ups with the player were a sign of wider dressing room strife? Remember the stories, especially in The Record, about how Ronny had “lost the dressing room” early in his tenure? They haunted him all the way to the very last day.
There’s no question that Brendan Rodgers inherited a fractured team unit. It’s equally clear, I think, that he had a fair idea going in that there were certain people who had rocked the boat and whose presence he didn’t want around. Right or wrong, fair or not, he’d clearly spoke to Ronny first and knew there were certain people to watch out for.
He took Scott Brown out for dinner before starting the job. Doubtless they discussed the dressing room factions, and both left feeling the same way; that the club had found a genuine leader, a man who was going to do things his way. The results are obvious. Celtic is playing like a unit in a way we’ve not seen in a long time. Every player looks ready to die for the cause. Even some of those who had seemingly spat the dummy and decided to seek pastures new – like Forrest and Rogic – signed on for the Brendan revolution. I thought that was hugely symbolic.
There’s no need for folk like me to do articles and stories about our new-found sense of purpose; everyone gets it. Everyone can see it clearly. It’s reflected in performances, results and the general demeanour of everyone at the club. And it’s reflected, too, in those who are no longer there, at every level, from the boot-room upwards.
The media spent so long during the Ronny Deila era telling us how divided the club was that it’s a wonder they don’t miss those kind of stories. You know they don’t, because if they did they’d have plenty to write about, just not at Celtic Park.
Five minutes of internet research tells you that there are rumours absolutely flying about dressing room unrest at Ibrox. And there’s much supporting evidence for it, in public statements by the manager and other individuals, in the Barton saga, in the disappearance of certain players from their first team squad and even in the attitudes and general indiscipline which prevail across the club in a broad sweep from their directors to their playing staff.
After all, when your board is issuing incendiary nonsense about how no-one likes them, alleging an SFA conspiracy against them and demanding that other clubs get their own houses in order as theirs falls apart around them, it’s not a stretch to imagine players deciding that if the rules no longer apply then they no longer apply, full stop.
When one player is condemned to training alone for telling the manager a few home truths and another retains his place in the team despite facing criminal charges for his part in a pub brawl on the night we beat them 5-1, that’s the kind of inconsistency that can make people wonder whether you’re making up the discipline code as you go.
Warburton doesn’t even hide the problems any longer, because he doesn’t have to. He told the media – freely and on his own – that there had been a training ground bust-up in the middle of last week. Did he get a follow up question? Did he Hell. Why bother? Why rock the boat? Why ask who was involved, so the fans could ascertain if it had affected the likely line-up? There’s nothing like living in the information age, right?
The stories about unhappy players over there are numerous, and there’s a particular issue around O’Halloran and Tavernier, who are believed to be unable to sit in the same room as one another without it degenerating into a shouting match. Some think this is why the winger never makes it into the team, even in front of the struggling, ineffectual McKay. There’s also reputedly an issue between Forrester and the manager, a Joey Barton style falling out which hasn’t generated the headlines but is causing plenty of anger on all sides.
I’m not suggesting that the papers break out the “Sevco In Crisis” headlines; their graphic departments have never produced such things and I don’t expect them to start now, or indeed ever. But there are enough stories out there, and enough informed sources backing them up, that even our laziest hacks wouldn’t need to do too much digging.
If this was a Celtic manager, you better believe there’d be a lot of busy wee bees doing their homework in the newsrooms right now. Because when Lennon was boss, and when Ronny took over from him, those articles sold a lot of papers.
And perhaps that’s the trouble here; the readerships of these rags have sunk to such a profound level that only the hard-core still bother with them. That hard-core likes to be told that everything is okay, that the ranting of the Internet Bampots can be ignored and then even those well informed people in their own support, who predict disaster, have it all wrong.
Maybe I’m being too hard on the hacks; maybe it’s not that they won’t write these stories but that they can’t. We’ve already seen how tightly controlled their press conferences are, after all. That’s proved quite a story on its own recently.
There is no question that Warburton has lost the dressing room. Should we be surprised that there are no questions about it? Of course not. But problems don’t go away just because they are being ignored. It hasn’t worked for their financial woes, has it?