The Celtic Boss’s Comments On Vata And Kelly Were Hard, Ruthless And Necessary.

Yesterday, the boss gave a media interview which was absolutely extraordinary. In it, he answered some of our concerns on player signings, and that was interesting and I’ll get to it later on, but of far greater significance, I think, than his stating the obvious on the need for new players was the answer he gave to questions about Daniel Kelly and Rocco Vata.

It’s funny, but yesterday I did a piece on Kelly where I expressed my view that the club had a difficult choice to make in terms of his involvement in pre-season and beyond. You don’t want to put him in the shop window if he’s not going to stay but you always have to be attuned to the possibility of getting direct criticism for not involving him either.

It’s a tough line to walk.

I also suggested that the only way the club was ever going to increase its offer to Kelly was if the boss himself made the case for that being done. But I offered the suspicion that the club and the manager would be in complete agreement on this matter. So it has proved.

Rodgers comments cut right to the bone. He spared neither player in his cold-blooded assessment of the situation, and he brought clarity and light to something that has irritated fans and divided opinion. No more. The manager has made it clear what happened in both cases, he’s said that the buck stopped with him and he confirmed not only that he froze Vata out of any involvement in the first team but that he will do the same with Kelly.

I know that some people will still take issue with the decisions he’s made, but those decisions have been made in the best interests of Celtic.

Rodgers offered both players not just a path to the first team squad but actual places in the first team squad. In the case of Rocco Vata, he offered the player the opportunity to come in and be Celtic’s third pick striker … this is exactly what a lot of our fans were calling for. That’s how highly he rated him. That offer was spurned along with our contract.

With Daniel Kelly, we’ve seen a similar thing and Rodgers has confirmed that he told Kelly personally that if he wasn’t prepared to sign a deal that this made it very difficult to see a way of including him in the pre-season preparations. I find it hard to argue with any of that. The club has been straight with these players, and it has been fair with them.

As I wrote the other day, the club knows what it is paying for here. Potential. That’s it. Rodgers pointed out that neither player is near the level they might be capable of. “He still has a lot to learn,” he said of Kelly, in an echo of previous remarks that he’s made about Vata. There is probably not a better manager under which to do so … in spite of what some people, who still cannot reconcile themselves to Rodgers being back at the club, might think.

There are those who enjoy stamping their feet on this issue, and demanding that our youth players get more games. At exactly which part of last season would people have welcomed seeing more of them in the team? This is a serious question, and I’d love it if some of these people would answer it instead of moaning constantly without addressing the point.

Should we have given them games at the start of the season, when we were busily assembling the seven point lead we enjoyed early and which gave us our cushion for the mid-season slump, when it became clear that of the ten players the board had signed that at least half a dozen weren’t worth a damn? Were we not supposed to give those players a chance first?

Or should we have given them games during the mid-season slump itself? When the pressure was at its highest and on every one of the players in the squad to be at their very best? Who actually believes for even one second that this would have been a good time to fill the first team with a bunch of academy players? You know what would have happened? As our lead at the top was steadily whittled away the manager would have been blamed for not fielding his strongest side and the kids themselves would have been pilloried for not meeting the standards.

Anyone who says otherwise is a barefaced liar. We know this to be true.

Maybe what they really wanted was for us to forego the strategy of playing the proven winners in the last third of the season, when we were chasing down the double? Who would have voted for that? Who would have been in favour of handing a critical league title run-in over to unproven players from the youth academy? Who thinks we’d have won those prizes?

And finally, if you are in favour of us flooding the team with academy talent then you cannot complain if we aren’t spending money. If you are one of those people who contends that Celtic should be built on youth, then you better ask yourself what you are prepared to sacrifice for our club to conduct that wild experiment. Trophies? Titles? Are you happy to see an Ibrox captain raise the Championship flag whilst we flounder?

Because I’m telling you, that’s what will happen. Youth players have to be brought on carefully and slowly unless they show something next level which makes them impossible to ignore, and even then they have to be grounded and willing to put in the work and grow and develop whilst giving the club the security of a long-term deal whilst they do it.

I know this; no club would have bought ten players last summer, most of them projects, if we had our own “golden generation” coming through the academy. The idea that all these kids needed to hit that mark was to play regular football is laughable.

Only people who know nothing about the game could possibly believe that. I read a comment today that said, in an obvious dig at Rodgers that “It’s not about the 18-years-olds you have, it’s what you do with the 18-year-olds you have.”

So, talent isn’t important, only that you throw them into the team? Or am I missing the point? I don’t think I’m missing the point, that’s what this person is saying. To me that sounds suspiciously like the suggestion that we should forego big money signings and throw a bunch of kids into the team because in doing so they will magically become better.

It’s an idiotic argument, and furthermore it is one that has failed for almost every mid-table and bottom half club in this league … all of them have blooded more young players than Celtic in recent years, and where are the emerging talents? There have never been more young players in Scottish football … so why do we look around at a desiccated landscape?

There are three things which are crucial before a young player is ready for first team football, and I can tell you right now that Kieran Tierney was the shining example of all three.

The first is the talent to do it. Regardless of what Mr “it’s what you do with the players that counts” thinks, talent is the key that unlocks the door. Without it you are pissing in the wind. Without it you might as well not even bother. Tierney broke through younger than most players because his talent stood out a mile, and it was obvious from his first minute in the team.

The second is a recognition of the work that has to go in to becoming a top professional, and this includes recognising that you can always learn more, that you can always grow as a player, that your development isn’t complete the minute you sign a contract that makes you a millionaire. I remember seeing Tierney doing an interview with CelticTV in which he talked about his diet, his training regimen, his focus to be the best player he could be, and then he added this amazing observation; “I’m an athlete. This is my job.” And I knew then that this was not somebody who was going to be constrained or held back, this he viewed football as a career in which he wanted to excel.

The third things is a corollary to the second point; a recognition that everything has to be earned, that nothing is given to you, that football is a meritocracy and that it’s only when you have proven your worth that your true value will be recognised and rewarded. Tierney knew that. He didn’t think he’d cracked it by making his debut. He knew that there would players coming after his position, that nothing was guaranteed, that he would have to keep on producing to stay in the team, and he’d have to keep producing at a level commensurate with that status as a first team player. Too many young players believe they are entitled to things, and they’re just not.

To get the money and the recognition you need to prove yourself and too many of them aren’t willing to put in the hard yards, get their heads down and be patient. That’s a mentality thing, and the reason Tierney made it to the elite level is that he had that elite level mentality.

Those who believe that we have failed to produce more first team players simply because we haven’t put more of them in the first team … where are the players who prove your theory? Where are the elite level talents we let slip through our fingers because we didn’t give them game time enough?

Andy Robertson. So long ago that few who were involved in that decision are even at Celtic now.

Who else? We’ve given more players careers than just about any other club in the country … but where are the ones who went onto careers that suggest they would have been major influences on our own side, if only we’d recognised that talent?

When I said the other day that our Chris McCart run academy has failed, and failed utterly, that’s my evidence of it.

Other than Forrest, McGregor and Tierney we’ve produced nothing of consequence in over a decade.

If you want to look at where things have gone wrong, stop looking at managers and our “failure to provide a pathway.”

It is garbage. Managers want to work with the best players, and some of them you have to sign and some of them you’re able to produce. Rodgers won’t work with sub-par signings. Why in God’s name should he work with sub-par academy boys?

The job of any football boss is to get results. Pure and simple.

At a club like Celtic that’s all he’s going to get judged on. If Rodgers stuck eight academy players into the squad, failed spectacularly and got sacked, what would the verdict on him be? Would people say “aah but we’ve now got a core of home-grown talent in the team”? No, would they bollocks. He’d get flamed for taking such a mad risk, for gambling and losing, and the board would cop the flak for forcing him into that position, whether they had done so or not.

A handful of players from our youth academy are considered good enough.

Three of those who the manager’s rated in the past two years – Vata, Kelly and Doak – were offered first team squad status and new deals. All three have chosen to go elsewhere. Doak, at least, cannot be blamed for seeing Anfield and the EPL as a bigger stage, although how much time he’ll get on it is anyone’s guess, but in my view, Vata has gone chasing the money and Kelly might follow him.

So they were given the pathway, all three of them, and all three of them have rejected the chance to do as Tierney did, to stay and give themselves the space to develop and grow and play in the first team and earn those bigger rewards here whilst also giving us the security that comes with having players on long-term deals.

Quite why anyone is blaming Celtic for that, for not offering the pathway which Rodgers had made it abundantly clear that we did, I do not know. Why anyone would criticise the club for not just recklessly throwing money at guys who had potential, nothing more than that, at this stage in their development cycle, I find equally baffling.

When this club screws up, I am the first person to give them stick. I do it without fear or favour. I will criticise players, the manager and of course the board. I’ve even had a few pops at sections of the fan-base. Believe me, I’ve looked at this from every possible angle and I cannot see where we could have done better, or where we’ve allegedly gone wrong.

And I won’t give us stick for that, and especially not the boss. He has shown pragmatism here and the sort of ruthlessness we hired him for in the first place. He is the only elite level individual in the upper echelons of the club, and he’s proved it here again.