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.
I was amazed at how quickly the Rodgers cheerleaders welcomed him back after how he abandoned us. I have also been bemused at how so many people were prepared to put all the blame for a ‘weaker squad’ on others rather than Rodgers; Rodgers’ comments about ‘working with the players I’m given’ is him getting his excuses in early. We are missing Jota but aside from that the squad is not weaker, but the management/coaching team most definitely is.
Like yourself James, I defended the appointment of Rodgers as I truly believed that he could have taken us to a higher level within CL football.
Have to hold the hands up and admit that opinion was nothing but horseshite.
This is every bit as bad as we had with lenny in the 10iar season.
How we have gone from champs to chumps in just a few months can only be put at ones man door and that is Rodgers.
No tempo to our play and without any direction or style to it whatsoever.
Players as once winners, looking not one bit interested.
A unity in team spirit totally evaporated.
How can 1 man totally erode everything that was created in just a couple of months into a job.
Could any ex hun cause as much distruction within our team, in such a short time?
Struggling to think they could have, is the level Rodgers currently finds himself in, with a P45 waiting for himself on Monday week by the looks of things now, and if this imposter has anything about him, just walk away, as the boot up the hole is very close for him now.
The only people to blame for this crisis is The Board and the Manager they brought in, them and them alone.
I don’t blame any player, bringing in project players to replace experience and allowing a player under contract to leave the club immediately to chase his girl friend ranks as pure amatuerism.
The manager who has looked lost on the touchline had better get a grip before this season is lost. For a start play the striker as an out and out striker.
Having been at that shitshow today it does not bode well for the season , a totally embarrassing display , too pedestrian in possession , back to walking football , side to side passing at the back , a powderpuff midfield where Callum McGregor looks like he’s never played the game before , O’Reilly couldn’t hit a coo on the arse with a banjo worst finisher from midfield I’ve seen in a long time , Turnbull an empty shirt and totally out of his depth , shame cos I thought he would’ve been a revelation at Celtic but time to go son. Kyogo looks like he has no idea where he is supposed to be and Maeda you’d be as well replacing him with a mannequin as he has the first touch and the control of a bull elephant , his shot today from just outside the box nearly knocked wee Jays specs aff in the standing section . No width , no punch , no pace , no idea and no chance next week playin like that.
God help us , in Brendan we trust ! Never did I think we should’ve re appointed him as his time and style of football has been and gone .
Big empty spaces in the stands to look forward to in the coming months , yet again from a position of strength we have plummeted to absolute shit in a matter of months.
You seem to forget the last games of last season where we fell over the line to win the league something was wrong then and hasn’t been fixed .you said that was the bulk of last seasons team ,jota mooy Carter vicars starfelt are all missing from that team
I said after Killie game he looked weak, he looks even weaker today and in every interview
he has with the media throwing questions at him weaker by the day.
This is not going to end well for BR……..new system or not we are so disjointed.
With Hatate looking for a move could it be that the Japanese experiment is coming to an end……….even Kyogo doesn’t look happy.
Who would have thought when BR was appointed after a couple of games the fans would be booing him AND the team…..something is far wrong with the whole set up and maybe just maybe BR is not the answer we were looking for and why Bernabei and Turnbull are in this team i will never know
HH
We didn’t need another “Yesman”. The board is full of them already, better known as Desmond’s Donuts.
Nepotism and lack of ambition, the anthem once again for another season.
Today’s team performance was very reminiscent of the performances in the 2018/19 season, especially from the Christmas till Rodgers walked away in the February 2019. A reverse result and another poor disjointed performance away next week and I can see the writing on the wall for up to now a lacklustre manager. No hunger or fire from anyone at the club , something is really lacking in the motivation department for sure: hopefully next week we can forget this slow start and kick on from there but, I’m not convinced.
He looks like a rookie manager on the touchline these days.
Can’t see him lasting three months never mind three years, his pride won’t allow it.
When he was given the job I , like many others were neither happy nor disappointed.
However after Ange many are disappointed with the style of play as much as the results .
Lack of effort in the Kilmarnock game ,not today , seemed to point to unrest in the group .
However ,at the moment, he has time to recover.
Sadly should he attempt negative tactics next week I feel certain we will be undone easily
We had confidence in Ange when he endured (along with everyone else) a poor start to his time at Celtic. He said the right things, dealt with the media appropriately. He accepted his lot but didn’t take any snash. I am not sensing the same things from Brendan and that is wildly confusing because he oozed confidence last time he was here. If he fails here this time his rep is shot to pieces. So I am surprised we aint seeing the fire we expected to see, especially after the Killie showing. However … we must give him more time as we did with Ange. I still have confidence he can turn it round although I now fear next week’s match has come too soon. I’d take a draw now. That lot, however, will not. They smell blood. Come on Celtic – time to get back into gear.
The manager should be the first to inspire, then the captain on the field. I just don’t see anyone ‘busting a gut’ and it’s 11 v 11 after all. On the plus side there was a clean-sheet and a goalie that could go a long way, Dimitar Mitov.
Rodgers appointment was always strange. We were fed pish that he was here to have a go in Europe. Now he tells us the players aren’t good enough, and he needs more. We’ve signed 8 so far and if we sign the Greek winger. We’ll have 9 wingers and only 2 strikers with one injured. Maybe his best days are in the past and he’s run out of ideas.
scary, scandulous….but you are so right…
i almost hope we are thrashed by the huns next week…i have never, ever, in 61 years following our beloved celtic, felt that way before….if it takes bucket loads of humiliation to bring this guy and this board down…so be it…
don’t know where this all ends……
the lawwell’s……that’s who i believe are to blame for all this….fuk them to hell…..along with that pompous, arrogant git here in ireland…..
“i almost hope we are thrashed by the huns next week…”
Yeah right, pal. Jog on. Idiot.
Hello James. I share all your concerns. However I give Rodgers and the board benefit of the doubt until the end of the window.
If the ‘1st XI ready signings are not delivered, huge questions would be asked to what was the point of appointing Rodgers and why did he come back?
I hold fire for the time being. I did find Rodger statements bizzare and somehow I don’t feel he has fire in the belly this time round.
If the window closes and he has left with a weaker team we might see the Covid season all over again and with it the end of Rodgers carrer.
Somehow I can’t accept he is stupid enough to let that happen. The same way that Villa annialated Hibs, we have enough to best teams like Kelly or St Johnstone. He has to get it right or the board’s negligence will galvanise Sevco.
Garbage transfer window so far.. signed guys too sit on a bench when we need to improve the starting 11. All these project players is an absolute disgrace.. jota, mooy and starfeld were starters a lot of the time.. and we sign these duds to replace them. I have a bad feeling about next weekend… unless we get a few bodies in this week, it could be a long afternoon at ibrox. What happened to this war chest Brendan Rodgers was getting, the biggest pile of pish ever. No goals in 2 games against pure garbage, pish Scottish teams and we are going in the champions league pretty soon, nil points could be a possibility with this team. It’s time the board got the finger out and signed some ready made starters, instead of these project players.
Forrest, Scales, Ralston, Bernabie and Turnbull played very little role in what we did last season. Yet here we are today and they’re all getting minutes. Our squad is poor as we we seen last season when Ange rotated for the last league games.
Rodgers of course is not without fault but he’s got a bad squad right now and is relying on players who shouldn’t be near a Celtic shirt doing a job for him.
We all knew months ago that Ralston, Taylor, Bernabie, Turnbull, Forrest shouldn’t be playing for us but yet here we are.
We appointed Brendan then didn’t back him. Now we’re back to last minute signings having sat on our hands all summer.
On a lighter note, anyone requiring cheered up should watch tonight’s episode of ‘Match of the Day’ and focus on £21m man Calvin Bassey’s performance for Fulham against Arsenal…..
Give him til Christmas. You never know, there might be a plan. But this is dire stuff to watch. We don’t need to “draw out” an oppositiwho are happy to camp at 18 yards and take a draw. We need to open them up. Pulling our high scoring striker 20 yards back isn’t going to achieve that.
He may be the patsy, but that’s his well paid problem. The squad he inherited were miles off the champions league. But they were good enough to beat St Johnston at home and Kilmarnock in the cup. It’s painful to watch us just now and I don’t see a cohesive plan. Many times I’ve seen us struggle at the start of a new manager and thought “But I can see the plan. When it ‘clicks’ we’re going to destroy teams” (Sadly everything changed in Deila’s team before that happened, he should’ve kept the faith). But this team… I don’t think they need to click. I think they need to learn what football is.
James I know you’ll probably laugh but someone earlier said give Charlie m a 6 months deal he is ten times better that this shit and he’s also well used to playing at the shitdome.