Rodgers Doesn’t Need To Build A Siege Mentality At Parkhead. Celtic Is Actually Under Siege.

How do you build a siege mentality at a club? It’s not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, you have to be able to establish the idea, then build on it and finally sustain it. That’s why it rarely works. Because the conditions for it don’t exist at most clubs.

Think about it. You need to establish the idea that the world is against you. How do you do that? You need certain things to go against you. Officialdom making bizarre decisions which seem to go against you or in favour of your rivals with grim inevitability.

And you need a heavy and sustained bombardment from the media. Every positive thing that happens at the club is twisted. Every negative blown out of proportion. Every defeat has to be painted as a disaster. Every triumph as a pyric victory at best, if not a reversal that just hasn’t revealed itself yet. When you win the media focusses on some area where you got lucky. When you lose it’s the start of a crisis. No peace. No respite.

But here’s a question; if all those conditions exist, do you need to be fostering the idea that the club is besieged? Aren’t those things evidence that it actually is? The media would have you believe otherwise, but they are the ones who’ve given us cause to believe it.

Ewan Murray made Rodgers the subject of his latest Guardian piece, and amidst all the rest of his nonsense he talked about how the manager might yet turn this around, and build on it to once again make himself an iconic figure at this club.

“This, however, requires Rodgers to have an appetite for the job in hand,” he wrote. “His demeanour suggests that may not exist. Picking arguments and citing negativity which has actually been created from failings within the club itself has little durability.”

I mean, there’s so much wrong with that single paragraph that it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s deal with it thus; Rodgers clearly does have an appetite for the job, because if he didn’t, he would never have taken it on. He would not be so obviously frustrated at the failure of the club to fund his plans. As to his demeanour, well that’s been the subject of many an article and much speculation since Rodgers returned to this club.

And you know what? It’s all that speculation that’s the problem. If Rodgers seems pissed off it is because from the second – the very second – he was back at our club the media has been trying to drive a wedge between him and the fans, and second guessing every decision he makes. The criticism of him started on day one and hasn’t let up at all.

Murray claims that the negativity is caused by events inside the club; some of it certainly is. But these people are kidding themselves on, because they’ve been on the hunt for Rodgers right from the beginning and all they’ve done is ramp the pressure up on him.

The board has created its own toxic problems, but there is no doubt at all that this club has been under the hammer since this season started, before a ball was kicked even, and that the main target was the manager himself. He has not created these conditions. He is trying to deal with them as best he can whilst the love-in continues for the guy across town.

Who needs to foster a siege mentality at Celtic? We have no need of such a thing, not when we face a literal siege. Being under a dark cloud at Celtic is business as usual. Even when we’re winning everything the narrative around this club is all about players who might be leaving and interest in the manager and all the other rubbish that goes with it.

Murray and others are fuming because Rodgers is now showing his appetite not just for the job at hand but for the battle that will involve. They know the danger they are in.