Celtic’s Great Pre-Season Should Make It Impossible For The Board To Let Down Rodgers.

There is a common thread running through a lot of the conversations I’m involved in right now, and especially as the pre-season has rolled on and climaxed last night with that routing of Chelsea; the idea that the brilliance of our performances will give the board an alibi, even if it’s just an in-house one, should they decide not to give the manager the funding that he needs.

You know what? That’s a narrative that is so tempting with its common sense and its adherence to historical precedent that I could almost believe it.

And yet I think it’s false.

I’m not saying they won’t see it that way. I’m not saying that they might not attempt it. I’m saying that it is not the alibi any longer that they might think it is, and it won’t protect them in-house either. In fact, it will do the opposite.

To not back the boss now will make them look like shit, no matter what excuses they offer, no matter the people who speak up for them.

I’ve spoken and written on this at length; the stuff about “good players won’t come here” is rubbish.

You only need to look at the ones who already have.

The Ibrox club, even in a shambles, have signed a guy who was with the Czech team for the Euros. I’m not saying he’s a world beater, but he’s got a decent profile and he went to a club that doesn’t even have a ground to play in. I am through having people push this obvious fiction at us.

We are here because the people at Celtic have made inexplicable and indefensible choices not to go after players of a certain calibre and with a certain profile.

They are weak. They are limited in their level of ambition and that drags the whole club down.

This stuff about transfer windows being difficult, it’s also obvious rubbish. Other teams manage them just fine. What they mean is that it’s difficult to sign players within the narrow parameters they have decided to shop in, but again, it’s a choice to set those parameters in the first place.

This has been a pre-season far better than anything we anticipated.

The board did nothing to properly help us prepare for it. I cannot imagine that a series of disasters would have forced their hand. These people would have written that off and tried to fob us off with the signing of Bernardo and a couple of last-minute loan deals.

But the excellence of the football we’ve watched and being able to beat two good EPL sides, and last night much more resoundingly than any of us might have expected, has changed the game and the ground has shifted under their feet. Rodgers is strengthened immeasurably, on top of the power he already wielded.

The football was spellbinding. He is the towering figure at the club.

Those above him exist in his shadow, and that’s how it should be.

I said after the City game that we had been given a glimpse of the future. A possible future anyway. Last night it became clearer than ever just how close that future might be, and how we’re set up to get to it with a manager like this in charge.

If he is funded properly, if we’re allowed to emerge from this window stronger than we ended the last campaign, we will be in a better place for Europe than we have been in a long, long time.

And there are opportunities here for us, if we reach for that rung of the ladder. The only thing standing in our way is that board of directors.

If we can add three or four top players to this squad we will take giant strides. Giant strides. It’s obvious. If you watched those games, you know it, it’s crystal clear.

The football flowed. The fans are buzzing. Rodgers sounds reinvigorated, although to be fair he started sounding increasingly bullish as we reached the finish line last year, and not without good cause. He knows he’s the best in the business here, and more to the point so do the people who run this club.

If he’s not backed they should expect Rodgers to head for the exit the minute his three-year deal at Celtic expires, and that man can leave them without a name.

I think the number of fans concerned about this window tipped over into the majority when the team went to the US without a single outfield addition, and in fact with a squad no fewer than three key players – Idah, Oh and Bernardo; or if you like, a second striker, a third striker and one central midfield player – down from the last campaign.

Most people recognise that this is unacceptable and cannot really be defended, and especially when we can afford to spend.

But if that’s the same state of affairs when the league season kicks off a week today there will be even greater anger. If something happens to Kyogo in the next week there’s going to be something more than anger in the air. The window certainly cannot close with the squad in this state.

It cannot close without serious money being spent, and at least six signings. Three to replace players who have gone – if two of them are the same players fine – and three who add strength to the squad. I would have liked more. We have no time for that.

We have shipped out some deadwood. Other players will leave on loan or on permanent deals. Our squad will be smaller; that’s no bad thing as far as I’m concerned.

Too much bloat causes problems of its own, and it stops that handful of genuinely talented kids from getting through the process. But the core group of it cannot end up weaker, it has to be stronger, it has to be an improvement on where we are right now.

Without that, there will be – there must be – more than just hard questions this time.

Our fans are entitled to be furious. The manager is entitled to be furious. Because a great opportunity will have been squandered, where our ability to progress has been hampered not by some outside force as some will try to claim but by one inside our own walls.

Their position was difficult before this tour. Brendan Rodgers has rendered it virtually impossible. That doesn’t mean they won’t just withhold backing for him anyway. But it means that no-one can defend them for it and do so with a straight face.