Celtic’s Dressing Room Woes Are Another Symptom Of Incompetent Recruitment.

There is a tremendous, but little seen, British movie of the 1990’s called Paper Mask, starring the ever-excellent Paul McGann.

He plays a former biology student working as a hospital porter who has spent so much time in or around the diagnostic rooms that he can answer patient questions before the doctors can.

When he witnesses a car accident that results in a death, he finds out that the dead guy was to start work in another local hospital as a doctor … and believing he’s up to the job, he assumes his identity and takes the guy’s place there.

You can guess how well that goes.

One of the themes this site returns to again and again is about how little the wannabe accountants and pen-pushers and bean counters inside clubs really know about football management.

They seem to think being in proximity to coaches and players, and perhaps having dabbled in the odd game of Football Manager, that they really understand the dynamics and mechanics of the dressing room and about how to construct a winning team.

You only have to look at our transfer policy from the summer and its utter illogicality to see the hand of the amateur at work.

Nothing about it makes the least bit of sense.

Positions which should have been filled were not. Areas of the pitch which did not need it were reinforced. The signings were so scattershot, a hodgepodge of them. That we were allegedly prepared for the Asian Cup when we signed a further three players eligible to take part in it makes a nonsense out of any claim that those involved knew what they were doing.

There is no way in the world that Rodgers was responsible for that.

His mistake was in trusting that the system worked. He had watched, from afar, as Ange Postecoglou’s first and second windows fit together like a perfect puzzle and my guess is that he gave too much credit to those over his head.

When he said he would work with what he was given I think he was probably already pretty worried about what was happening in front of his eyes.

Look, anyone who thinks I’m giving Rodgers a pass here hasn’t been paying attention. Go back and read the match reports over the past month. It’s shocking what we’re being forced to watch and even when we’ve gotten results there hasn’t been a single display where we’ve looked particularly good. The football is some of the worst I’ve had to watch.

Rodgers doesn’t get off here. If this season ends the way its heading, if he’s blown a seven point lead and exposed us to this garbage we’re watching and there’s no league title at the end of it he’s got no chance of surviving that.

There are people on the board who will sack him in two seconds and as much contempt as I have for them it will be the only sensible decision. He should be doing one Hell of a lot better than he is right now. He’ll also have shown himself up as weak, and you can’t be weak dealing with the kind of mindset that runs rampant at our club.

There are dynamics at play here which we aren’t seeing properly, and we got a glimpse of some of those issues this weekend in what McGregor said and then with Taylor’s comments to the media. The players have held an inquest and some of them have been told to get the finger out and start producing for the team. That’s a hell of a thing to need to happen.

But it happens, and it is particularly common when you have a dressing room full of people who have won things and been successful and are driven to succeed and you throw ten more bodies into it and expect that to work well.

One of the problems with the signing of project footballers is that most of these players have no idea what it is like to play for a top club and they have no experience of winning things. And some of them have the wrong mentality for it.

Again, this is something Rodgers has pointed out and which has largely been ignored. What do people think he’s talking about when he says that analytics don’t tell you everything?

They don’t give you any idea about how hungry a player is, or whether he is prepared to pull his weight or how he will cope with the pressure at a massive side … Rodgers has decades of experience in this stuff. Decades. That judgement should be respected and trusted.

Instead, he’s got Daddy’s Boy throwing players at him with no thought whatsoever as to whether or not they have the right character, or can integrate into a team or whether or not they are disruptive presences … no wonder the dressing room is all over the shop.

Why do those working above Rodgers think that top managers insist on meeting every signing? Why do they think that whole “I want to look him in the eye” stuff is so important?

It is critical. Yet we’ve actually had board apologists mocking Rodgers comments to that effect. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Absolute amateurs, that’s what those above Rodgers are.

They don’t have a clue how to build an effective unit, but because they meet the players in the corridor every day and can have a laugh and a banter and a joke, they think they can build a team. They think that constructing a squad is nothing but a bunch of numbers.

Because numbers are what they know. It’s all they know.

This is how dressing rooms disintegrate.

Players who think they’re on holiday sitting alongside seasoned winners. Players who are in and out for the money wearing the same kit as those who understand the responsibility of playing for a massive club. The more random the strategy for signing players is, and the more random players you sign the greater the chance that something like this is going to happen.

And that’s how titles are lost.