As regular readers know, I am no fan of TalkSport even at the best of times.
It’s an English station that gets its Scottish news from The Daily Record, it frequently attacks out club and the standard of Scottish football, it is a serial pusher of the Survival and Victim Lies and it is filled to the brim with EPL obsessives who think money equals greatness.
Today the Daily Express is carrying a story, and quotes from them, which attacks our manager. Directly. And our club. Quite blatantly. It has sought to suggest that Brendan, and therefore Celtic, is interfering with the inner workings of the transfer deal between Southampton and Liverpool over Virgil Van Dijk, because we’re due a cut of the money if it goes through. And because Brendan was once at Anfield.
A guy called Bob Mills was behind this offensive suggestion; he’s a radio “personality” down there, and he does his TalkSport show alongside Perry Groves, who was the subject of an article here a few months ago after he said Celtic were a Championship side at best. Mills was on the show with him that day and agreed with every word … but today he’s gone further than Groves in that he’s labelled a quite shocking allegation against our boss.
Speaking on the Virgil Van Dijk transfer deal he said this;
“I think he’s getting phone calls on a regular basis in his ear all the time, saying ‘push for a move’… from Brendan Rodgers. I believe they’ve got a 10 per cent sell-on clause for any deal.”
Brendan Rodgers is a man of the utmost integrity; no-one in the game seriously debates that, except for Jon Daly who might as well have been reading off a script with Ann Budge’s hand up his backside the other day.
Mills’ comments are outrageous and the allegation goes beyond Brendan and actually touches on the integrity of Celtic itself.
He and the club should be demanding an apology from TalkSport and the station should be forced to get the chequebook out and make a charitable donation with it.
Shame on them for manufacturing such a story at our expense.