It wouldn’t be the morning of an important game without some press reports linking one of our players with a move, or the manager with another club. It’s the double bill today, of Manchester United and Kieran Tierney and Brendan being linked with Chelsea.
Amazing, isn’t it, how the Scottish hacks who didn’t know Craig Whyte was a crook until the BBC literally rubbed their faces in it, can be quite so well informed about the goings on and plans being laid by sides south of the border. If they can cultivate sources that well it makes you wonder what in God’s name they’ve been doing all this time on the domestic front.
How many times does Kieran Tierney have to say that he’s happy and staying at Celtic before the penny drops on other people? And to go to Old Trafford? I understand why the story is out there, but it’s people making something out of nothing.
Kieran Tierney is going to be a Celtic captain; it’s as simple as that. He is going to be here for years.
On top of that, Brendan to Chelsea? I see why some have made that connection too, but for newspapers to breathlessly report that he is on a “shortlist of three” implies an understanding of the mind of Roman Abramovich which not a single person on the planet can claim.
Chelsea is one of the most sack-happy clubs on the planet.
It’s had eleven managers in as many years, five of them on an interim basis. There can be few higher pressure environments in all of football.
Brendan has spoken at length about clubs which sack managers without giving them a chance to get the job done.
He has been scathing about it. There is no way that he would go to work for the Mad Russian at Stamford Bridge. His coaching background there means precisely nothing; I once read a dead-on claim that Martin O’Neill would leave Celtic for Leeds because it was the club where Brian Clough, O’Neill’s mentor, had failed … I mean, you could make a case for just about any old garbage if you were being creative enough.
Brendan knows he has an opportunity here not only to win things but to build something that lasts beyond him.
Few managers have such a chance. Few managers anywhere. It is impossible for a long-term project boss like Brendan to turn down. He would have done it at Anfield given the chance; he will be given the chance, and more, at Parkhead.
He is a legacy builder. Celtic will be his finest work, the best he ever does in his career. And that work is not anywhere near complete yet. All this talk in the media has been one objective; to knock us off our game. Ironically, it comes in the same week when Dave King voluntarily and for reasons known only to himself, torpedoed his own manager and filled the papers with speculation as to who his replacement would be.
I’ll save the hacks time and trouble; Brendan Rodgers is not on the shortlist.
Enjoy the game, brothers and sisters, and I’ll see you on the other side.
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