Celtic Fans Did Not Need The Daily Record To Tell Us Ange Is Not Going To Leeds.

The Daily Record is claiming an “exclusive” this morning, that people at Celtic are relaxed about Ange and the links to Leeds and don’t believe that he’s interested in going anywhere. Like that’s “exclusive.” Doubtless The Record spoke to someone close to the club, but how “inside” do you have to be to listen to the manager and know this stuff?

Let me tell you when we should be worried. When a top EPL club openly courts him, during the close season. When the issues for one campaign and have been decided and he has not yet started his work on the next one. I might feel a flicker of concern then.

People in the media keep on darkly hinting at him “doing a Rodgers.” But when Brendan Rodgers left Celtic, things were not going well for him at the club and his frustration and discontent had become wildly obvious. Relationships inside the walls had cratered.

As I’ve said before, I knew things at the club had broken down on the day after the Champions League qualifier with AEK Athens, because Rodgers had bitched out the club, the club had responded and I was at a meeting with Lawwell where his own displeasure was very, very clear.

Ange has great working relationships with everyone at Celtic Park. He has been backed to a degree which, to be frank, has been phenomenal. If the club continues to trust this man and his judgement and support him in the market, we have little to worry about except the possibility that he will get an offer that he simply cannot turn down.

And it will be blindingly obvious when that offers comes, and Celtic would wish him well and so should we. But that’s not Leeds and it’s not going to happen whilst Ange is focussed on winning things. In the close season, maybe, if it’s the right club.

The other comparison people keep talking about is Gerrard leaving Ibrox in a big hurry, but I know, because I’ve spoken to people who do have an inside track on that, that Gerrard was not a happy camper, that there were serious issues at the club and he had lost any confidence in getting the backing for his grander ideas.

Some in the media are well aware of this, but they still use Rodgers and Gerrard as their proofs for why Ange will leave us in the lurch. But neither of those giant egos felt appreciated in their posts, or at least not sufficiently feted by their bosses.

Those circumstances, which saw those men leave mid-season, are not applicable here, and Ange is a man of honour and integrity who sees his vision being backed. There are crucial differences, then, between the situations with Rodgers and Gerrard and this.

It’s good that Celtic is confident. It’s good that people inside the club are content with things, and relaxed about the situation. There is a minor annoyance here in that they have chosen to send that message via a rag that has no credibility amongst the fans, but the mainstream media does serve a useful function at times like this and as they are the ones pushing this nonsense it’s perhaps only right that someone at Celtic has used them to send the right message.

Regardless, it is not a message I needed Keith Jackson to deliver. If rain was battering my window and it was blowing a gale outside and he told me to take a coat if I was going out, I would insist on a second opinion. More than that, I would feel patronised and pissed off that he clearly thought of me as an idiot. That’s how I feel right now.