Diplomatic Rodgers Cannot Hide His Frustration At Celtic’s Transfer Window Farce.

Brendan has insisted that he’s not interested in the blame-game over the transfer window. He talked about collective responsibility.

There are people who will try to tell you that Rodgers is at it, that he’s working his ticket, that he wants out of Celtic or even – and I swear one website tried to make this case this morning – that Rodgers himself decided not to sign proven quality in this window and went for backup players instead.

None of that is true.

Nor would it be true for anyone to try to pretend that this window was a success. Nobody sits and talks about people looking to apportion blame, and about collective responsibility, who thinks that he’s coming off the back of a success. Rodgers is acknowledging that the transfer window was an abject failure. He’s not even attempting to sugarcoat it.

But unlike his pay masters, who are the authors of this disaster, he’s not looking to hang it around anybody’s neck either. He accepts that he bears some of the responsibility for it, and I agree with him. I don’t think he has shown the appropriate courage or conviction to change these people’s minds. He is not happy about their performance though.

“I would go with supporters thinking we maybe could be a bit a little braver in terms of bringing in another level of player,” he said. Which knocks on the head any suggestion that it was his decision to downgrade the quality he was looking for here. It also knocks on the head any suggestion that he’s perfectly fine with the way things have gone here.

But if he’s not openly accusing them of lacking ambition, he’s saying that they lack bottle and imagination and I don’t disagree with that at all. He wants to project the impression that the club is united and working as one, but it would be disingenuous and even outright insulting for him to have sat there and pretended everything is fine.

He says everyone is working towards the same goal, and I guess I have to believe that … but in his own diplomatic way he’s admitted that there are differences of opinion, and big ones, over the best way to get to where we want to be.

And you know what? He’s the football professional and I’ll trust his judgement over that of a handful of bean counters who wouldn’t know a full-back from a hunchback.

I am pleased that the manager is frustrated and is allowing that frustration to come through today. To have sat there and put a smile on his face and pretend that he’s perfectly happy with what we’ve all watched would have been transparently fake.

Rodgers is not in the least bit interested in pushing narratives or treating us like mugs. He’s not happy and we’re not happy and he’s saying basically what I would expect anyone in his position to say. Those above him need to do a Hell of a lot better than this.

And he’s saying something else, and this is a critical one; when he’s talking about collective responsibility, he’s saying if the manager is being judged on his results then everyone else at the club should be judged on the same basis, and that might be the most important message to come out of the day and indeed the whole of the last four or five weeks we’ve had to endure.