Jackson’s Latest Rambling, Shambling Attack On Rodgers And The Celtic Fans Is Abysmal.

Well, it’s Monday afternoon again and we’re back going over a Jackson piece with the fine toothed comb, and once again it is richly deserved.

Why is it this guy? Why do I never feel the need to do this with any other writer in Scotland? Not The Village Idiot, not Keevins, not English (when he can be bothered to write)? Why is it only Jackson who has inspired not only the full flamethrower, but also his very own satire? (It’s been a while on that front, I grant you, but Jackass will return.)

The latest piece of vomit spewed forth from his pen is really pretty bad, so let’s not waste time and just get right in there so we can get past it and get on with our day. Let’s start with the headline, although I know he doesn’t write that. But it’s usually pretty reflective of the piece.

Brendan Rodgers nibbling back at Celtic fans left him looking wounded and shows patience is running out – Keith Jackson

And it is very reflective of the piece, which is about how it is Rodgers who is going to be under pressure if the team isn’t strengthened. Which is only half true. But that’s what most of this piece is, a curious mix of fact and fiction. A Jackass piece of sorts, in a way.

Our man sees an exasperated Hoops boss and reckons the Parkhead board have to deliver for the Irishman in the final days of the transfer window.

This is what continually numbs the brain when covering Jackson; the number of times he goes down one road and then swiftly contradicts himself. Now it’s the board’s fault. You see what I mean? This joker never knows which part of his brain he’s supposed to be listening to. That was the subheading. The next bit is the first paragraph, badly written as usual.

There were already 70 million reasons why Celtic’s board can’t afford to keep their hands stuffed in their pockets before the passing of Thursday night’s transfer deadline.

He’s referring of course to the money in the bank. But actually, it’s the money we’re risking which is the more pertinent factor here, that and the league title of course. How stupid do you have to be not to recognise that? You have to be Keith Jackson.

But, on Saturday at just around teatime, it became 70 million and one. Because when his frustrations bubbled over and Brendan Rodgers had a nibble back at Celtic’s fans and for the first time the manager left himself looking wounded and a little bit vulnerable.

I don’t edit the Jackson pieces. If the staff at The Record are too damned lazy, or he is too damned lazy, to do that job then why should I? To the general point he’s making – badly – Rodgers was certainly a bit more abrasive than usual, but wounded and vulnerable? Not so much. A man who is very pissed off. Which isn’t the same thing.

It is not like Rodgers to make such a misstep which just goes to show that his patience is running out and maybe even dangerously close to becoming exhausted. This is a man who revels in the kind of unconfined adoration he enjoyed during his first spell in charge.

I don’t disagree with any of that, at least not on a surface level. If he’s feeling cheesed off he should direct his anger where it belongs, which isn’t at us. But I can appreciate that any man in his position would not be reacting well to it.

That’s not unusual and nor is it a character flaw. Who doesn’t want to feel appreciated in their place of work? But it should come as a genuine cause for concern nonetheless because if Rodgers feels he’s not getting the same sense of job satisfaction second time around, then where exactly does this relationship go from here?

Exactly the subject I wrote about last night. But containing one major flaw, typical of all Jackson’s work; he walked the first time because he wasn’t getting a sense of job satisfaction. I know it has been customary to blame Rodgers himself for his departure, but it had roots that go deep into the problems at Celtic, problems which have nothing to do with him.

He knew he faced a battle to win over hearts and minds when he agreed to take on the task of replacing Ange Postecoglou in the summer. But Rodgers wouldn’t have put himself in such a precarious position unless, deep down, he truly believed he would have them eating out of his hand again after his first few months in charge.

Nonsense. That makes it sound like Rodgers sole reason for doing the job is to be loved, to be the centre of attention. This is a driven man, a man who thirsts after success. He wants to win. If being loved flows from that he’s happy to bask in the thrill of victory but this is such a simple minded analysis of our manager that it could only have come from someone truly stupid.

Instead, they are growling at him in a manner which suggests one day soon they might be more inclined to bite it off. And that’s despite the fact he has their team sitting five points clear at the top of the table. Rodgers certainly isn’t feeling the love of a section of fans who sing songs about being Celtic supporters, through and through.

More simple-minded analysis, and this time badly misjudging the mood in the stands right now. The reaction the team got at full time was an accumulation of various concerns and frustrations, it was not universally directed at the manager. This is an example of Jackson thinking football fans are all sheep. It’s ivory tower egotism, and so of course bollocks. This paragraph also contains the first snipe at the fans. Let me clue him in on something; that’s 50,000 season ticket holders he’s talking about there. We’ve paid the money to sit there every week. We don’t need to demonstrate further our “faithful through and through” credentials. When do you think was the last time this clown, or any of his ilk, paid to get into a football match?

Well, if they consider themselves to be the faithfuls in this production then you don’t need a round table with Claudia Winkleman to work out what that makes Rodgers in their eyes. That’s why his second coming was such a low profile affair compared to his first arrival in Glasgow’s east end back in the summer of 2016 when so many thousands of supporters turned up to him in the flesh that they had to open up the stadium to accommodate them.

Jesus. That first line … that creaks like a pensioner trying to carry heavy shopping bags up three flights of stairs. Jackson’s lack of a proper education is obvious in the way he tries to use current trends and pop culture analogies to such ham-fisted effect. They are always awful and this is one of the worst. The whole Rodgers The Rat, or Rodgers the traitor, stuff is older than his Sunday Mail colleague. And just as boring to have to counter.

On June 19 last year, little more than three men and a dog were there to celebrate his return. And since then there has been an unmistakable feeling that Rodgers is being little more than tolerated by the masses.

This is not the first time he’s made this particular shit joke, but I was there that day, and there were a considerable number more than that. In fact, he got a greater reception that his predecessor did, and a greater reception than Lennon or Deila before him. So what in God’s name is this gibbering idiot still banging on about this for? This paragraph also pokes us gently in the direction of blaming Rodgers for the current malaise, when in fact it’s not entirely his fault and most people in the stands are well aware of that fact.

That’s why he let it slip on Saturday when he was asked about the jeers which greeted the final whistle at the end of a 1-0 win over Ross County. “I’ve had that since I’ve been here,” Rodgers said as he stared down the elephant in the room. “If it’s not the result, it’s me. If not me, the board. So, all we can do as a team is win games, and try to improve and develop – and win.”

This is one of Jackson’s biggest failings, and there are many of them; he gets mad idea in his head, usually with nothing to support it except his own prejudices and penchant for wishful thinking, and then he constructs the rest of the article around it. He’s operating on the premise that Rodgers is pissed at the supporters for not loving him. If he’s wrong then not one other thing in the article stands up to scrutiny. But all Rodgers did was react to a question about the booing with some momentary frustration. He isn’t carrying a grudge against us, he’s said something daft in the heat of the moment. He shouldn’t have done it, but I get how it happened.

And there’s the problem right there. Winning games of football no longer seems to be quite enough to satisfy the appetite of a support which has gorged itself on victories and silverware ever since Rodgers first appeared on the scene seven and half years ago.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t this article present itself as being about the board not backing the manager? When did this loon lose control of it and veer into an attack on us? What a piece of outright nonsense that paragraph is, yet more ivory tower bullshit. Celtic fans are frustrated to the point of anger by an accumulation of issues, most of which stem from the director’s box and the policies this club is blindly following. He says it himself in the opening lines of the piece, those “70 million reasons”, so how this has turned into our fault I do not know.

They bristle at being labelled as ‘entitled’ when that’s precisely what all of this dominance and success has made of them. When you really think about it, it’s perfectly natural. Celtic’s support has been spoiled rotten over the years to such an extent they cannot bring themselves to contemplate anything other than a continuation of this monopoly.

This is an alleged journalist writing about tens of thousands of people, and ascribing to them a simplistic, even moronic, viewpoint. Celtic fans, in the main, are not “entitled”. We’re going to lose trophies, because you can’t win every game. We don’t ask for more than the best efforts of the people who run the club. What Celtic fans are pissed off about is needlessly throwing trophies away. Gambling with a title and Champions League qualification when there are “70 million reasons” not to do it. See, this guy has the attention span of a gnat. He starts out with the idea that the board hasn’t done enough, and has somehow veered into some bizarre off-ramp in his brain to arrive at the conclusion that we should just be grateful for what we’ve got. If you are sitting here waiting for this to cohere into something that makes sense, don’t. Because it isn’t going to.

And the very idea that Rangers might get in the way of it, brings on a sense of hysteria. That’s why they were running riot in the car park when Steven Gerrard led the Ibrox club to a first title in a decade back in 2021. So the sight of Philippe Clement closing in to just two points in Paisley on Saturday lunchtime was enough to heighten the stakes even before a ball had been kicked against Ross County.

The “riots in the carpark” narrative again. A handful of people knocking down a barrier. The only hysteria I detect is in the media and its shrieking Clement love-in which wasn’t even interrupted for a week when the much maligned Rodgers easily dispatched him and his team. For the record, Celtic fans weren’t objecting merely to the possibility of losing the title that year. Those protests were about the board’s complete failure to act earlier than they did. Every single fan could see that the season was unravelling under Lennon and they allowed it to. It was nothing to do with entitlement, it was anger at a board that was letting the club rot from the inside. You remember the Numbskulls? I’ve mentioned them before. I think Jackson’s broke into the drinks cabinet and went on the lash and then took over the controls a third of the way through this piece.

And yet Rodgers can’t be held responsible for the restoration job the Belgian is carrying out on the other side of the city. Clement insisted after his side’s 1-0 win at St Mirren that he’s not even looking at the numbers and that he won’t bother himself with points totals until such times as the title is about to be decided.

What in God’s name is his point here? Who is holding Rodgers responsible for anything that happens at Ibrox? Rodgers’ record against this guy is played one, won one. That’s the fact of it. The media might want to deny the implications of that result, but they exist nonetheless. Rodgers has already put him in his place. Celtic’s problems are all about what happens in our own house. If we get the next few days right, who cares what Manneken Piss does?

So let’s do that for him. Before Clement’s arrival, Michael Beale had secured only 57 per cent of the points which had been available to him in the first seven league games of the season. With 37 points won from a possible 42, Clement has raised that return to a whopping 88 per cent.

And Jackson was writing the same sort of stuff about The Mooch. And the same sort of stuff about Van Bronckhorst before him. And before Van Bronckhorst Gerrard was the blue eyed boy and before him … blah blah. Callum McGregor has said it. Brendan Rodgers has said it. We have all said it. We have heard this song before and before and before and Rodgers, in particular, just keeps on adding to his collection of Ibrox managerial heads on spikes.

Which is the real reason why Rodgers is feeling a bit of heat even though he continues to lead from the front. What’s more, he’s beaten both of these rival bosses – fatally undermining the last of Beale’s credibility in early September before inflicting the only defeat blotting Clement’s copy book since he took over from the Englishman the following month.

Another paragraph suggesting that the focus of the fans anger is all on the manager. Which is rubbish. And once again, you have to wonder what was the point of the “70 million reasons” why the board couldn’t fail, just to drop that from the article entirely and turn the guns on Rodgers and the fans instead? Did Jackson have to check in with Lawwell first to make sure it was okay?

For the record, Rodgers has piled up 82 per cent of the points which have been up for grabs in Celtic’s first 23 league games of the campaign. But while his team also won 1-0 at the weekend it wasn’t enough to placate the punters or keep the peace.

Amazing that stats like this are only ever produced to attack people at our club, isn’t it?

Before the end of the evening they were bombarding the airwaves to complain about the standard of the performance and to single out Rodgers as the man they hold most responsible.

The average Celtic supporter does not even listen to those phone-ins far less participate in them. If I were him, I wouldn’t be hanging the credibility of the article on that. Coming out of the game I heard plenty of anger. Most of it was directed at the board for leaving the manager twisting in the wind. The performance was dire, but the swirling anger is far from all being directed at Rodgers. And Jackson should know this. He started the article focussed on the real culprits after all. Which brings us to what for Jackson passes for the big finish.

And that brings us back to the start and the urgent need for Celtic to do something quickly to change the mood music around the club and its manager, with only four days to go before the transfer window closes down for another six months.

I don’t want this to sound wrong, but Jackson clearly needs somebody to sit him down and explain to him the fundamentals of opinion writing. You open with a segue into your main point. You do not start with your supposed main point, then write nothing else about it for the rest of the piece and then track back to it right at the end. People wonder what in God’s name the article was meant to be about. Is it those “70 million reasons” or the 60,000 people in the stands? This whole article has been as incoherent as the transfer policy our fans are angered by.

Rodgers raised the stakes by returning a little bit of fire on Saturday but he may also have been reminding his superiors that they too can influence and calm the situation before it becomes critical.

Rodgers didn’t raise the stakes. He made a daft comment at the end of a long afternoon, subject to the kind of questions a sycophantic media never directs at his rival. Rodgers doesn’t need to further remind the board of their responsibilities; how many reminders do they need? How much more obvious can you make it for them? It’s not that they don’t get it, they don’t agree and because they don’t agree they don’t care and I have to wonder why a sports journalist has spent virtually the entirety of his article focussed on people who have paid upwards of £500 to watch their team rather than on the ones who have us frozen in place. Jackson is a gutless fraud, that’s my interpretation of this. He hasn’t got the bottle to properly scrutinise our board.

For as long as the market remains open for business they have the opportunity – as well as the financial wherewithal – to bring the fans back on board and restore some much needed unity for the remainder of the campaign.

Way too little and way too late an effort to pivot back to the point. Woeful.

On the day of his reappointment Rodgers addressed the fans who did bother to turn up for him outside the stadium. Clutching a microphone he said: “For those who are with me and always have been, let’s enjoy the journey. For those who I need to convince, I will see you here in May.”

Staggeringly ignorant. I was there that day and I’ll educate Jackson a little, and those who were in the room with the fan media know this is true; I was the one who initially drew that response from Rodgers, after the presser wrapped up and the cameras were off. I asked him, jokingly, what he would say to the hacks who had said that last time he had coasted against weak opponents and this time would be put in his place. His answer? “See you in May.” We all laughed, and he went outside and he repeated the line to the troops. Rodgers was not talking about the sceptics amongst the fan-base. It was a reference to the hacks who were talking and writing that rubbish.

If Celtic don’t put a dent in that £70m bank balance before the week is out, then that end of season reunion in the car park may be a lot less warm and fuzzy than Rodgers had in mind.

The worst ending since they wrapped up Dexter season 8. If that day comes Rodgers will swing, there is no doubt about it, but the anger won’t be directed solely at him. Most of it will be directed at the people who didn’t give him the backing. Why mention that £70 million bank balance if you’re just going to blame the manager for not spending it? What a horrendous piece of work this was from Jackson, nothing but an ignorant attack on our supporters and our manager although he opened with the suggestion that he had the target firmly in his sights. This guy couldn’t hit the proverbial cows arse with the proverbial banjo. File this one under Failure.