Brendan And This Celtic Squad Will Deserve All The Credit If They Triumph In This Title Race.

As we come out of the worst transfer window let-down in living memory, one that made the Wilo Flood window look like a triumph, things are coming into focus. The performance of the head of recruitment is one of them, as I wrote this morning. But so too is the answer to a riddle which has been long pondered over by observers in many different sports.

Who actually wins things for a football club, or in fact any sports team? Are the owners, the CEO and the finance guys responsible for every trophy and title, or does the victory belong to the small group at the sharp end, the coaches and the players?

This argument has raged since time immemorial. Brian Clough once told Sam Longson that his only role at Derby was to write the cheques. Who was right and who was wrong? Longson gave him his platform from which to grandstand and backed him with those cheques. So when Clough stood on the touchline after Juventus had knocked them out of the European Cup and ranted about being stymied not only by a ref he branded a cheat but by his own board was he right?

Well, when Clough left Derby did win another league, but it was their last top flight title and they never climbed the mountain in Europe. Clough, on the other hand, went to Forest and not only made them champions but brought the greatest prize in football back to that modest club not once but twice. So who was right and who was wrong?

Looking back on his career years later, in one of his books, Clough lamented what happened at Derby. That club, he said, should have been what Liverpool were in the 80’s, a multi-title winning, multi-European Cup winning elite team. He blames himself for it, for not giving the chairman the respect Longson demanded. Not, for Clough, the respect he deserved. Clough was adamant that the worst thing ever to happen to Derby was his departure. History backs him up.

Several of the players Clough had taken to Derby also ended up with him at Forest. So his judgement was sound (at that time) and Forest reaped the benefit. The right combination of players, under the right manager, made the miracle happen.

The same happened at Celtic under Stein; would there have been a European Cup without him? What part did the board play in the success? Does history recall them? I could name the starting eleven in Lisbon if you woke me up out of a deep sleep. I couldn’t tell you the names of a single director, although I know there were probably White’s and or Kelly’s on the board, whose sons and grandsons we eventually had to run out of town on a rail.

When Phil Jackson and his Chicago Bulls team, five times title winners vying for their second three in a row run, called their playbook for the final campaign before their squad was broken up The Last Dance, Jerry Krause, the general manager, was very confident that he could lose Jackson, Scottie Pippen and even Michael Jordan the greatest player of all time, and build another title winning dynasty. “Players and coaches don’t win titles,” he had scornfully said. “Organisations do.” He tested the theory … to destruction. Chicago hasn’t won a title since whereas Phil Jackson went on to lead the Lakers where he built another dynastic team.

The disgrace of the last two transfer windows has left Rodgers with a weakened version of Ange’s treble winning side. He has had to contend not only with injuries and the departures of key players but also the contempt and second guessing of those above him at the club, people convinced that the successes this club has enjoyed are down to them. How many more fools at the top of clubs will try to prove this discredited theorem? Ours intend to give it a go.

But their opportunity to make a contribution is over. They had their chance to stake their claim for some of the glory; they didn’t. These guys are sitting on a transfer surplus whilst this team cries out for quality in at least four positions. Whatever else happens here, nobody in that director’s box can kid themselves that the success of this team is theirs.

Rodgers and this team stand alone on the field of battle with only the fans to have their back. Whatever I think of this board, and I’ve written many, many, many thousands of words on that subject in the past fortnight, this manager and those players have every bit of support and will get every bit of encouragement that I can give them now.

I will not forget, nor forgive, the people who didn’t just fail to support that but at times seemed almost to be working counter to the manager’s needs … and nor will I stop shining a light on their ego-driven running of this club as though it belonged to them.

The players and the manager can write history again, filling up those pages with their names once more, and this title will be all the sweeter for the fact it was achieved in spite of those in the director’s box. It will be the ultimate proof that it’s not out of shape, arrogant pen-pushers who build winning sides.