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Right Now, Rodgers Radiates Weakness. Celtic Needs More From Him Than That.

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What was the logic for bringing Brendan Rodgers back to Celtic?

What was the central concept?

That this was a modern manager, with tactical flexibility and a vision for this team which included bringing his own players and enforcing his own will. Right now, not one bit of that is valid.

Not one of those reasons exists.

We forgave two early victories where we looked a shadow of the side we were lasts season.

Last week was a like a throwback to the worst of Neil Lennon.

This week was inept and horrific to watch. You would not believe that this was a treble winning team last season.

They look bereft of ideas and inspiration. They look flat-footed and fearful. And on the touchline the man in charge looks like he’s going through the motions. There is no fire, no passion, none of the things you expect to see from Rodgers.

This has been a hellish week at our club, and the start of it wasn’t even the Kilmarnock game but what he said in his press conference just before it, when he made it clear that his role at the club is to coach the players he is given.

He has no excuse today.

Those are the players he was given and those players, the bulk of them, won a treble last year.

He isn’t even getting the minimum out of this squad right now.

His calls for more, for “quality” are understandable, but in all the ways that matter they are a pale excuse he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with. How much more quality did he need to get past Kilmarnock and St Johnstone?

I said after the game last week that it wasn’t the back line who scared me but the abject performances of those at the sharp end, those whose job it is to win games. They were the issue last week. They were the issue today.

But more and more, Rodgers is becoming the subject of the discussion and those of us who thought it was a good appointment did so, based on what we’re watching right now, on a major misapprehension; that he had a vision and was in complete command of it.

The moment he told us last Friday that he was not, in fact, in charge of that vision the first brick fell out of the wall.

If he’s content to let those above him decide what players he has, he can’t complain about the players he has, even if this window doesn’t deliver anything further.

He has enough experience dealing with the hierarchy at this club to know how that ends, and if he thinks he can hide behind that if this all goes wrong he needs his head read.

That won’t save him when the board are sharpening their axe and it won’t save him when the media are sharpening their pens.

They will point to the team he inherited , remind people it won everything and was capable of playing dazzling football, they will point to the tens of millions spent on it to enhance it and even accounting for injuries he will have no place to hide.

And he deserves to have no place to hide.

I don’t see a leader right now. I see a man being buffeted by events and incapable of reacting to them. I see a man flailing and trying to deflect. The responsibility for it all lies at his door.

The loss of Jota does not explain the regression in our front players.

The loss of Carter Vickers and the backline hasn’t seen us concede a flood of goals.

Our problems are middle to front and it’s down to him to fix that. He, after all, is the one who broke it and whilst it is the manager’s prerogative to put his own ideas in place that’s only valid if those ideas are actually working.

Right now they’re not.

Right not this team is awful to watch.

If he’s the leader we think and hope he is he would be leading off the field instead of presenting himself as the board’s talking glove puppet. I don’t remember him being this terrible at man management either, but he’s definitely gone backwards in that regard.

The players hear him talk about needing more quality and a better class of player and they are entitled to feel insulted as they proved they were good enough in the last campaign.

If he doesn’t get the players he wants then he’s not only offended the current team but will come across looking hopelessly weak.

And you know what? Maybe he is.

If he genuinely has allowed himself to be shoehorned into the role of accepting what he’s given then to be frank he deserves everything that he gets. I can only think of one person on the planet who recently demonstrated such staggering naivety in believing he’d have the backing of people who once screwed him over, and he was neatly dispatched by Vladimir Putin this week.

This seems destined to an equally happy ending.

When Ange Postecoglou was being interviewed for the Celtic gig, he didn’t know these people or their record for “backing managers” by expecting them always to do more with less.

But he still asked for, and demanded, and got, total control.

For all he knew that could have been the deal-breaker, but he would not have taken the job without it.

His command of the club was one of the foundation stones of our success.

It did not matter what way you looked at Celtic, he was the front man, the commanding figure. I called him the architect in a piece at the end of the first season and I thought of him that way thereafter. Rodgers, right now, is less like the architect than the guy you bring in to unblock the toilet. He cuts a highly unimpressive figure.

And if this is who we got, then he’s not going to last and it could be fast and it will definitely be ugly.

This guy was not a popular choice.

It was not a celebrated appointment.

He had only so much good will in the bank, and his account was not exactly overflowing with it.

His staggering admission about leaving other people to run transfer policy was already deeply troubling.

Then Kilmarnock beat us. Now this.

Ibrox is next, in front of a 100% home support and if we lose that we’ll have gone out of the League Cup and flogged a thee point league lead in a fortnight, and for all this board has played its own dire role in that he has done it with a squad that won the lot last year and is kidding himself on if he thinks he can hide behind the directors and the policy he accepted and signed up for.

Because even if we were willing to let him they will throw him to the wolves without a second thought if it keeps the scrutiny off of them. Right now, a lot of our fans wouldn’t even complain about that outcome and that should scare him badly. If he’s not going to lead, and articulate a vision, this job is going to chew him up and spit him out.

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31 comments

  • Roonsa says:

    How about responding to some of the more sensible posts rather than shooting fish in a barrel by responding to some smart arse who writes a comment in English, uses Google Translate to change it into German, Spanish then French before translating back to English?

  • Eldraco says:

    5 guys on there running around 5 years ago that were not 2 years ago.!

    What he is doing to kyogo and calmac is disgraceful, kyogo is arriving a yard late and missing chances call is also to deep and only has 2 CB now gone are his inverted fulls.

    Johnstown U could see had the shits with the lack of effort on occasion, Turnbull, Forrest, Taylor, Ralston, the turnover rates!! , Turnbull is not good enough to start end of. Maeda? Good knows what’s happened there.

    Going to be some spectacular next week ,2 shit teams going at it.

    Be afraid,be very afraid.

  • John L says:

    Why should he give 2 F**** he still has more credit in the, I’ve done it bank than Stevie G and look at the money that Bam Pot is picking up. We are in a lot of trouble right now and I don’t see a way out of it.

  • Jackson says:

    How many times will BR take the boos from our fans….before he walks or is sacked.
    One of your earlier posters got it right
    a whole summer and we signed projects
    instead of first team ready players.
    I don’t think either that our fans will forgive the Liewells …..
    HH

  • Michael McCann says:

    I believe from watching the performance yesterday we have lost the league already. I know its the beginning of the season, but what I witnessed over past few games that we are looking at a Rodgers team before he departed the club last time round. Dead football, no drive, no passion in the players spending most of the time playing Lennon back passing football. Rodgers was a man of no ideas yesterday. We are in trouble at present, but maybe there is time to fix it, but something drastic needs to happen and quick

  • Edward Murison says:

    Bobo glint manager was the way to go I said that from start he attacking manager and has had some fantastic results with so called average but he wud had celric bombing down the wings goals thrills just exciting football who are great unit he has blended together evey player knows his job.by contrast no player knows what he’ll going on far less what they’re expected to do we need cut Rodgers loose get the bobo manager in ASAP or everything we worked for will be flushed down toilet only Rodgers cud take treble winning team and see them going backwards it’s job for cronies Desmond n lawell to blame cudnt get Rodger in door fast enough time to act is now let Kennedy n Strachan take team until we get bobo manager in the door if we have any ambition we will do it remember timeblennon had stop rot months n months we won nothing until ange came in

  • Bigbaws says:

    Am sorry, but Rodgers team just now is playing the same shitty football he had celtic playing the season he left. Shitty , slow built up play. It’s plainly obviously that is the style he was the team to play otherwise why would you have turnbull in your team. He takes an age on the ball. Can’t stand the wee prick

  • Clara says:

    BR was a busted flush who came back to Celtic because no half decent EPL team would have touched him, he was brought in by DD because he’s a mate and deemed risk free. His last season at Leicester was a disaster and for most of the time he was there, looked like he was going through the motions.

    He is far too rigid tactically now and I listened to a great video by a Leeds fan where he stated that BR plays 4231 at Home and 433 away from home, Leicester played Leeds away from home using 433 and totally destroyed them ( I think it was 4 -1 or 4-0), next game at home BR changed to 4231 and it was a 2 -2 draw, the Leeds fan couldn’t get his head around why the change, 433 destroyed Leeds so why change simply cause you were at home.

    We took a chance with Ange and looked how that turned out, the best football I’ve seen a Celtic team play.

    Knutsen from Bobo would have been a great choice, I believe he would have given us continuity in our style of play and would have got us punching above our weight in Europe.

    If SEVCO get a result against PSV this week then I honestly dread going to Ibrokes as they will be oooozing confidence while we don’t seem to know what the hell we are doing.

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