The Celtic Boss Won’t Care About Missing Out On The Manager Of The Year Shortlist.

The news today that neither the Celtic boss, Brendan Rodgers, nor the one at Ibrox have made the manager of the year shortlist is not exactly a great shock. Clement has been at Ibrox for half a season, and you don’t win the award on that basis. Rodgers was never going to be made manager of the year, no matter what he accomplished this season.

When Rodgers won his second treble, one of the two manager of the year awards went to Jack Ross, then at St Mirren. The other one went to Steve Clarke who was at Kilmarnock. I wrote yesterday about how that was an 82 points campaign, so it wasn’t brilliant from the point of view of us winning every week in style, but when a manager who wins a treble isn’t given the top honour then there are clearly problems with the system … not with the manager.

Last season, Ange Postecoglou won both of them, and became a two time winner.

But even he had to withstand some preposterous media suggestions that winning a treble as the manager of Celtic is easy. The drum was being banged for the small bosses who over-achieve; funny that these same people were utterly silent when Callum Davidson did what no manager in Scottish football has done in decades, when he won both domestic cup competitions in a single campaign with St Johnstone. But that year, of course, it went to Steven Gerrard.

This is why Rodgers will not care about being “snubbed.” They didn’t give it to him the last time he deserved it and he knows that there are enough people in the sport up here who just won’t vote for him this time no matter what. If he wins the double he’ll deserve the honour, but it’ll be too late then to give it to him as he didn’t make the shortlist anyway.

This is going to be the year of the little guy; of the nominees, I think McInnes has a case for it, but Tony Docherty ought to win it by a country mile because a lot of people thought Dundee would be going straight down again, but they won a place in the top six and so he absolutely deserves to come out on top of the candidates who made it.

The interesting name absent from the list isn’t our boss or the Belgian Waffler at Ibrox; it’s Steven Naismith. He’s got a third place final, he reached a cup final and also a semi-final. If you believe the hype he’s a top boss who at least deserves to be on the shortlist. The thing is, I don’t think he does because you can’t give an award to a guy who already has five defeats against one club and where there are serious doubts that he even cares.

Rodgers will not give a damn. He has his Scottish manager of the year award already and he doesn’t need a collection of those. For him, he would have understood how it works when he was robbed of his second one. Ange got the second one, but Ange’s second season was better than the first and there would have been no excuse for not giving him the award; everyone knew that he was due it. But with Rodgers the knives were out early and he was never getting any benefit of the doubt. He too deserved his second honour; let’s remember, he was the first manager in the history of the Scottish game to win trebles back to back.

So he knows the system is a joke. He knows it is laced with obvious bias. That’s why he’s not going to be terribly bothered by his name not being on the shortlist. If he finishes this season with the double he is once again the master of all he surveys … and they will have to give him some credit, even if it’s not that which he will have earned.