I read, today, Brendan Rodgers latest lapse into self-love with incredulity.
Does he really believe some of the arrant nonsense that comes out of his mouth?
The story about Scott Brown which is all over the media today reads so much like other Rodgers tales – most of them entirely fictitious – that it’s normal to wonder if any of it is true.
Let’s take the “phone call” he received from an un-named person, suggesting that if he wanted to win big at Celtic Park that he should sell Brown.
What absolute garbage that is.
Only someone completely unfamiliar with Celtic or Scottish football – or someone who wished us ill – could have, or would have, made such a ludicrous suggestion.
Frankly, I have trouble believing Rodgers got that call at all.
Even if he did, it’s the kind of thing he could have readily dismissed.
Anyone watching Celtic at the time knew that it was absurd.
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One picture of Brown sitting on the ground after a night-out was never going to erase from public consciousness the hard work Brown did on the park and off of it.
I found the kerfuffle around that picture to be ridiculous at the time and it’s even more stupid now.
It was taken in Deila’s first season as manager, prior to the League Cup Final.
As I’ve said repeatedly, it was Ronny – not Rodgers – who first infused Celtic players with the idea that they had to be athletes first and foremost.
This is typical Rodgers revisionism.
The whole article reeks of him engaging in his favourite pastime; taking the credit for the achievements of other people.
No matter how he coached it in praise for Brown, at the root of the piece was the idea that his own sage advice is what saved our captain’s career … or at the very least that he alone had the vision to recognise greatness in him.
Both assertions are absolute bollocks.
Brendan Rodgers did not “make” Scott Brown as a footballer.
Nor is he responsible for spotting what Brown could bring to the team.
Brown was doing it long before Rodgers arrived and he continued to after he was gone.
I named Brown as Celtic’s Player of the Decade … Rodgers was here for two and a bit years of it.
Honestly, all of us respect the job Rodgers did at Celtic Park just as we all have a certain amount of contempt for the manner in which he behaved at the end. But really, these desperate attempts to justify himself and cast his time at Parkhead in an ever more favourable light are tiresome.
He can stand perfectly well on his achievements … they are numerous and incredible and form part of our history, but there will be no rehabilitation for his reputation here.
Stuff like this frankly annoys people.
What bothers Rodgers himself, I think, is how seamlessly life at Parkhead has continued without him.
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