Are Celtic Really Ready To Go To War With Hampden? Brendan Rodgers Says They Are.

In the absence of the club itself making a definitive statement on the SFA and the Rodgers hearing, you just knew that the manager himself was going to have to be the one to come out and comment on it, and today at his press conference he didn’t disappoint.

He tore into the officials yet again and essentially doubled down on his remarks.

“It’s that one game but my observation is over many games, around the inconsistency of decisions. I don’t want to go into it too much, I never talk too much about referees, I understand they make mistakes. But I felt the ones last week were clear errors in the game,” he said.

“The first one, I’ve seen incidents worse than that (not lead to red cards). I thought the on-field decision was correct, the yellow card. We had a report back to say the studs and the boot were in the face of the player, which clearly, a couple of days later, was clearly not the case when you watch it. We’ll go through that and answer it later on in the month.”

When asked if he regretted the comments he made, he was unequivocal.

“Not really. My job is to defend the team and club and that’s what we’ll do in this case. We’ll defend it vigorously and when the day comes, we’ll go from there … I’ll sit down with the club and the lawyers and we’ll look at it from there.”

He and the club – because he’s speaking for them here too, and talking about the lawyers which is interesting – are basically telling the SFA to bring it on. That’s welcome even if it’s taken longer than it should have and is basically the boss himself having to front up.

Still, it doesn’t sound like Rodgers, or Celtic, intend to take this lying down and that’s all to the good because this really is a terrible situation we’re being put in here and everyone knows what’s at the heart of it. Is our club really readying for this though, are we really preparing to take Hampden on with the full force we can muster?

Rodgers thinks so. He sounds like he believes it, and let’s be honest; this board and this club owes him one for the abysmal time of it he’s had to endure here and he’s done it all with equanimity and without overly rocking the boat. The frustrations this club has caused the guy are part of what boiled over the other day when he stood in front of the hacks.

But we also know that the pressure has been on him and us as a club since this season kicked off. Mistakes have been made, and we will have to deal with those and the people responsible for them, but our club has been under siege since the start.

So if we’re coming out swinging it’s not before time and the fans will welcome it.

So too will the manager. We certainly won’t be short of weapons to use and although I think the idea that the timing is in any way designed to “help” us here I suspect we’ll use it appropriately to build our dossier and take these people on properly.

It is overdue. I would love to think this is the start of a bigger push but I don’t have much faith in those who run our club to have that kind of ambition or bottle.

We certainly cannot afford to lose t his fight though, this particular battle, and so when Rodgers says we’ll defend it vigorously I believe it and I look forward to seeing how we handle it.