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Rodgers Latest Comments Are A Message To Celtic Not To Repeat Our Mistakes.

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Brendan Rodgers has called for Celtic to appoint a director of football, in what I can only interpret as a plea for us not to repeat the mistakes which haunted his tenure and which have played a role in the events of the last few months.

I’m not here to rehabilitate the reputation of Brendan Rodgers; he’s pretty much taken care of that for good.

For him there will be no rolling back on the manner of his exit, but we’d be churlish to pretend that this guy doesn’t possesses a level of insight into inner workings of our club.

And tonight his call for the club to appoint a director of football – which he points out is a critical component in the structure of other teams, coupled with his explicitly making the point that the manager should have total control over choosing the signings, seems to me a clear reference to the interference we know both he and Lennon had to tolerate.

The engineer of that interference is leaving the club in June; frankly he cannot depart quickly enough.

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He and Lennon should have left together.

That said, we do know who the next CEO is going to be and he seems like a smart man who will know that proper lines have to be drawn between his role and that of the football department.

There is talk that what Celtic want is a technical director; no, no and thrice no.

That’s tinkering around the edges.

That guy would only be in charge of the non-first team staff.

We need a proper overlord of the whole football operation, and the director of football is the role which does that. If the DoF wants a technical director under him that’s his call.

Rodgers was hampered at Celtic; that’s not a supposition, it’s a fact.

He had specific targets for his summer transfer window in 2018-19 campaign and Lawwell either decided he wasn’t getting them or screwed up the negotiations.

The trust between them evaporated and especially when Lawwell briefed against him in the media.

Would he have stayed longer working alongside someone he absolutely trusted, in a director of football capacity?

I know this; nobody of any serious reputation would have been prepared to work under a meddling CEO.

Rogers is telegraphing the concerns he had whilst inside the club, and he is telling us the thinking of the kind of managers we want.

And for this we should thank him.

He might not deserve forgiveness for the way he fled Celtic Park like a thief in the night, but we know there were breakdowns in his relationships with certain other people of whom Lawwell was the biggest.

For all that, he has never said a bad word about either the club or those he worked under there.

This is as close to open criticism as he’s ever going to get.

He’s telling us “don’t repeat the same mistake.”

He’s telling us to draw borders and make sure everyone sticks to them.

It’s nothing but good sense.

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