What a joke our media is. Not at times, but all the way down the line. Imagine some desperate hack fishing for a story by asking Brendan Rodgers a question about whether or not the Celtic board would turn down some hypothetical bid from a Saudi club after the transfer window was shut. It’s a ridiculous query and the person asking it knows it is.
The transfer windows of Europe shut at exactly the same time, and so if it’s a risk then it’s one that we are sharing with every club on the continent. Every single one of them. The question could just as easily have been asked to Michael Beale except that his club would almost certainly accept any such offer no matter who it was from. And they are not remotely likely to be facing that dilemma anyway. Celtic, at least, has the sort of quality where we might.
It’s a cheap and easy story and one entirely without merit.
If the Saudis are still trawling for players when the European window shuts, I very much doubt they will be shopping in the SPFL, and if I’m being honest I do believe that Celtic would turn down any bid received after we could no longer buy a replacement, although Rodgers was much more cautious in his answer.
The obvious desire some in the media have for seeing us weakened is something I wrote about yesterday, and this question is another manifestation of it and a particularly naked one considering that it’s extremely unlikely to come about.
The player they most obviously have in mind, of course, is Reo Hatate, whose agent has already dismissed stories linking him to a move to Saudi as being without foundation and something in which the player has exactly zero interest. I’m sure they are also thinking about Abada and Kyogo to some extent; I think those scenarios are even less likely.
Nothing frustrates you more, as a Celtic fan, than this kind of loaded question and the double standard of knowing it would never be asked of a manager across the city. It’s a disgrace that Celtic bosses have to tolerate this stuff, and it’s a disgrace that it is allowed to go on. All that question represented was a chance at an easy headline.
But at the centre of it is a kind of desperate need that some of these Peepul have to imagine us weaker than we are right now. That’s what drives a lot of the reporting we have to put up with.
As every fan of this club knows, we are surrounded by people who are implacably hostile to us, and the manager knows that as well as anyone, just as the last one did and the one before him and on and on and on. It doesn’t matter what they are from; Norway, Ireland, England, Australia … they all come to feel the same way about our brand of “journalism.”
In short, they come to hate these people with every fibre of their being.
The past managers should fire an almighty parting shot at them on the way out as they owe them nothing and won’t pick up a ban for doing so.
Think the shiester was trying to put Rodgers in a spot about his own future and if an offer was made to Rodgers himself..
The people who ask these questions should be publicly identified and noted for future reference. They should get only so many chances and warnings before being banned.
Who was it anyway? Identlfy and ridicule him.
when I saw the headline on the back of the herald I didn’t need to guess who wrote it and it would be shite.
You are correct James. It is a disgrace, but also a backhanded compliment. As the question was put only to Brendan, the inference is that only Celtic have the quality which might interest the Saudis. MB on the other hand, has a squad filled with players nobody, not even MB, wants.
They clutch at ever frailer straws in their attempts to derail us and promote ibrox. This was real dreck.
I truly wish that an ex Celtic manager would expose these rats with crayons and microphones in an autobiography one day – I think Brendan will be too much of a nice guy to do it, as we’re Ronny and Martin, Lennon could do it but he hangs around their periphery and he most likely won’t manage at a high level ever again after blowing the ten (aided and abetted by plenty of his players) –
Strachan thankfully treated them with the contempt that they deserved but again he likes a gig with them from time to time so that’ll count him out unfortunately and Mowbery was really tough but would ‘just take it on the chin and move on’ so nothing doing there either I’m afraid…
I think Ange would absolutely do it – I don’t see him managing in Scotland again so he would have nothing to lose and it’s obvious the very justified contempt that he holds them in so maybe just maybe…
I’ve a trusted Sevco fan that I have a beer with from time to time (yes there is an odd one out there) and he said that he’d read Craig Whyte’s autobiography and in it there was a chapter where Whyte stated that The Scottish Football Writers actually CAME TO HIM to ok or not ok what they were going to publish –
If true – and I’ve no reason to not believe that Sevco fan – Then Dear Lord – What a bloody country we have to live in – Controlled and ran by and to suit Sevco by the looks of it…
Some people would call Scotland as North Britain – I’d say North Korea Britain would be more apt !