Rodgers Latest Interview Seems To Confirm That Celtic Will Not Make Major Signings.

I read Rodgers’ comments in The Daily Mail this morning in incredulity. I don’t know whether he’s been misquoted or misrepresented or if after talking about needing quality and power at the weekend somebody at the club has put him back in his box, but the mixed signals coming from this guy, or which are apparently coming from him, don’t make good reading.

Neither does McGarry’s article, because either he’s spinning us or the club’s spinning Rodgers or they’re all trying to put one over on the Celtic fans because the central thrust of what McGarry wrote is, to be quite frank, a joke.

He claims that Rodgers accepts that the club can’t do what it did the last time he was here.

What time was that, remind me? The time when our transfer policy was so second rate that he left for England for the first available offer? If we’re really gone backwards from the Mulumbu transfer window and the January one which followed it where the only player he got was one that he didn’t want then boy, we are in a whole lot of trouble.

McGarry talks in that article about how the first time Rodgers was here we brought in quite a few players from England. This is what McGarry’s piece says of that;

“Back in 2016, the Northern Irishman recruited players like Scott Sinclair, Kolo Toure and Moussa Dembele from English sides, with all bar two of his first seven summer arrivals moving north across the border.”

Right away you’ll see the problem.

Those three were the headline players brought from England. Toure didn’t cost us anything cause he was available on a free. Dembele, we signed for a cool £1 million as a cross-border development fee.

So he didn’t cost us the Earth either, and Scott Sinclair cost us £3 million possibly rising to £4.5 million … £3 million wasn’t then or now a huge sum of money. So who were the other two signings from England?

They were Dorus DeVries and Cristian Gamboa.

Are we seriously expected to believe that this was some kind of massive effort on the part of our club to push the boat out? And are we really expected to accept that we can’t sign players from south of the border even of that low quality?

Someone wants to tap this guy on the shoulder and say “Joe Hart. Cameron Carter Vickers.”

This whole thing … where is this crap coming from?

We might as well just chuck it right now if that’s what the board are telling him or if it’s the message he’s sending us, because we have given up even the pretence that we’re a serious player.

We’re run as a for-profit. The world’s first top flight for-profit football club.

Imagine getting knocked out of the League Cup, facing Champions League football matches which already make me want to hide under the bed and which some people are already booking their trauma therapy session far in advance of … and then sending the manager out with the message that we shouldn’t expect too much in the next eight days.

We are being trolled here, and that’s made my decision about giving this club any further cash this season incredibly easy. They can keep their Champions League tickets, I’ll take those games seriously when they start to, and they don’t, and they won’t.

“That is a real challenge for clubs like ourselves,” Rodgers said, in defence of this transfer window. “Coming back here, that was something I had to understand better, and why I took that time to decide. The club has to be sustainable while being successful. But it’s understanding where it is at in terms of what you can and can’t do. I’ll always work with the players the club provide me and try to develop them to be best they possibly can. That hopefully makes the club successful and allows them to move on, make money and we go again.”

Well I know somebody who’ll be going again if it doesn’t work out, and this time there’ll be no coming back.

You’ll notice he’s repeated the suicidal mantra “I’ll always work with the players the club provide me.”

You’d be advised also to pay attention to his paragraph as well;

“I think that’s why you see the strategy of (recruitment chief) Mark (Lawwell) and the guys, going to markets that were maybe untouched and the deals you can get in.”

This is exactly what I said it was in a piece earlier in the week; a horse built by committee.

This is people picking components for a computer rig without any interest in whether they can do the job or not; they are throwing a bunch of cheap parts together and telling the guy who has to build it, “There you go.” It doesn’t matter to them if those pieces fit, it doesn’t even matter to them if those pieces work particularly well or not.

The architect isn’t in charge, he’s taking what he’s given and hoping – along with the rest of us – that he can build something that stands up straight and doesn’t burn down from all the cheap wiring he’s been forced to put in.

I mean, I’ve been scratching my head for months wondering why Far Eastern signings are the priority when we’re going to lose these guys for weeks, for the Asian Cup, at a critical part in the campaign.

I wondered how the football department could possibly not be thinking about that … but the football department isn’t running this, so of course it now makes sense, because the only consideration here is “Where can we get players cheap who we can sell on later?”

No-one in the power structure cares if this leaves us scandalous unequipped for games, because that’s what they pay the “head coach” to deal with when the time comes.

The idea of using his official designation of “manager” seems ridiculous right now.

We are in big trouble here, and I don’t think the next eight days are going to bring us any respite.

Why’s he giving an interview to The Daily Mail anyway?

This isn’t about coming games; this is a media interview designed to dampen down expectations about the next week and reinforce the idea that everyone at Parkhead is behind this policy.

And you know something? My expectations are now officially at rock bottom.

I’m not even hoping anymore that it turns out right.

Lawwell is back in charge, and we’re off to the casino again, and one of the problems this club has consistently had is that idea that all we’re really doing is gambling with pennies anyway.

But these people are gambling with Champions League qualification, gambling with the dreams and ambitions of this support, gambling with the standing of this club as one which allegedly sees itself as a European giant, and be afraid because these people are utterly incapable of coping if we get into crisis and you saw it with Lennon.

According to The Sun, Hatate has turned down a new deal, which is just what we needed on top of everything else .. so instead of securing the players we need to progress, brace yourselves because it might be about to get worse.

I don’t know what the manager is doing back here in the midst of this.

The only reason most of us were willing to accept Rodgers as boss in the first place after the last time is the presumption – terrible word and how we have been so daft? – that he wouldn’t have come back without serious assurances and total control.

He doesn’t sound right now as if he’s even interested, his whole demenour, his tone, everything about him is passive and accepting … he sounds like a guy who’s lost his shirt and wearily accepts it.

The lights are on, but no-one’s home.

(That’s also a wee in-joke about our absentee landlord, obviously such a good one that I have to explain it.)

It’s now obvious though that we are not in the midst of a serious effort to grow this club.

We gave up on that the minute Ange Postecoglou walked out the door, and having given that guy full control (and all we got for it were two automatic Group Stages places and five trophies out of six, so you can see why that caused a problem, right?) they weren’t about to make the same mistake again … and Rodgers went along with that.

Jesus God … we should be riding high and this is where we are.