There’s a lot of talk today that Celtic’s fringe players may get some career rehabilitation under the new boss. Certainly, he knows Mikey Johnston and there’s a lot of people who think he’s going to get a shot, and the perception is that he has formed no opinions on the likes of Bernabei, Iwata, Kobayashi or others yet, but that he will in due course.
But some of the so-called fringe players are going to go, and that’s a fact. Few of them are going to get a full-scale reprieve.
The boss will work with a hard-core of players who have proven themselves as invaluable, but for others it’s going to be curtains. He will want to stamp his own mark on the side and he will know already who he thinks isn’t up to it.
Mikey Johnston for one; I think he’ll be allowed to leave the club.
Everyone knows I like the guy and I’m very concerned by how many of our forward players will miss crucial games during the Asian Cup and about the European squad … he’s a decent enough player, but he’s not going to start ahead of any of the guys in the squad right now, or whoever else we might sign. That’s just the reality of it.
It will be the same with other players in this team; some of them are not going to make it, pure and simple, and although Rodgers will take a look at all of them before he makes a final call but this is a guy who, by his own admission, has already watched all of our games under Ange Postecoglou and Neil Lennon before him; even if he hadn’t, the last time he moved to Celtic he asked for video on every one of our games before he even started work.
I suspect he’s got his own ideas about these guys and that although he’ll want a look at them just to be sure, I reckon though that key decisions are just about made and all that remains now is for him to talk to those guys he’s made them on and let them know it.
Because certain people have continued sending me abuse regardless of my decision not to publish comments in the past week I’m extending it into another week.