Celtic fans don’t care if Rodgers is a mercenary. They know he’s a winner.

Over on one of the Ibrox fan forums right now, they are seething over Ally McCoist’s recent interview with Brendan Rodgers. It amazes me how much hatred these people have in their hearts for anyone who doesn’t view the world through the same distorted lens that they do.

McCoist is a club icon over there—or he should be. His spell as manager, which was a disaster, shouldn’t really have overshadowed the years of service he gave them, including his willingness to stay working at the club after they crawled out of Rangers’ grave.

But instead of gratitude, he’s getting pelters from the fans because he was friendly to Rodgers in the interview. These people are mad, and they believe that everyone connected with their club should be just as mad as they are because they hate Rodgers. They cannot understand why McCoist does not.

Now, everyone knows that I am not McCoist’s biggest fan. I think he’s a slippery character who can say one thing to one audience and something entirely different to another. But it’s insane to expect him to hate people in the manner that they do just because they do.

The general issue they have with the interview is why McCoist would even want to do it in the first place. They see it as nothing but Brendan Rodgers’ self-promotion, and there’s a slight element of truth in that.

But see, Rodgers right now is Celtic’s ambassador. No one else at the club takes a front-of-house position. You may or may not like Michael Nicholson, and I have serious issues with how Nicholson’s stewardship has impacted the backing Rodgers receives. But the single best decision Nicholson has made as CEO is not having his face in the papers every single day. That means the manager is the front man, the main guy—as it should be.

And I thought the Celtic manager came across great in the interview. He exudes the kind of confidence right now that all top managers should have.

The Ibrox fans, though, have a different take. They see Rodgers as essentially a self-promoter and an empty shirt, claiming that for a spell last season, he was under real pressure. They appear to believe that Rodgers worked some kind of voodoo magic or simply got very lucky, and that’s why we won the title and the Scottish Cup.

But it doesn’t matter what you call it. It doesn’t matter how you look at it. If their argument is that Rodgers manufactured controversy and grievance to unite the Celtic dressing room and bind the club together through those last few months, well, so what if he did? Isn’t that what managers are supposed to do? Aren’t they supposed to get the job done, no matter how they do it? Aren’t they supposed to utilise every tool in the trade?

Rodgers created a narrative that was different from the one being pushed by the media. Of course, he did. The media narrative was entirely negative, not just during the pre-season slump but from the minute he walked back through the doors. So, when the chips were down and the pressure was at its highest, Rodgers found a way to deflect it. He went on the offensive, criticising the media and pushing back.

That’s what smart people in his position do. If people are coming after you, you have two choices: lie on the ground and take it, or start punching back. The upside to that is that you can, at the very least, back them off some, especially when they realise there is easier prey out there. That may even be one of the reasons why Philippe Clement found himself under the spotlight more as the season went on; Rodgers had proved he wasn’t going to take it lying down.

Rodgers took some hits for the players last season. He took some hits for the fans.

Because Rodgers is happy to be under pressure—he lives under it 24/7 and knows how to handle it.

And if there was a way to take that pressure off the footballers and pile it on his own shoulders, well, it was his responsibility to find it. And he did. That wasn’t luck. The path to the title was through Rodgers’ exemplary managerial skills, and those skills aren’t just on the training pitch or the touchline on match day. Rodgers has the full package, and he brought every bit of it to bear in getting us over the line last season.

There was nothing lucky about that. That’s exceptional management. That’s what you bring in a guy like Rodgers for; it’s why you pay him a huge salary. That’s why he’s entitled to go on podcasts, radio shows, and TV and talk himself up a bit. That’s why he’s entitled to sit there, preen, grin, laugh, and think the sun shines out of his own backside.

They comfort themselves over there with a simple thought: that if Rodgers proves again that he’s a dominant boss, the English clubs will come calling or the Saudis will make him a life-changing offer, and that Rodgers will leave. They take no account of why Rodgers left the last time, what forces were arrayed against him inside the club, what caused him to seek the nearest exit. They don’t pay attention to the fact that Rodgers has explicitly told Celtic supporters he’ll stay for the full three-year term of his contract. They call Rodgers a mercenary.

But this is a fundamental misjudgement. The biggest selling point for Rodgers’ return to the club, as far as I was concerned as a supporter, is that the whole game is run on a mercenary basis now. Nobody proved that more than Ange Postecoglou did.

As much as he liked life at Celtic, he was never going to let that stand in the way of advancing his career. If a guy like that, who understood the club and genuinely cared about it, still left in such a mercenary fashion, then we have to accept that the whole game is run on that basis. We may as well embrace it.

The argument in favour of Rodgers returning was simple enough for me: if it’s all about mercenaries, then we need to go out and find the best mercenary we can get, the one most likely to bring success because he’s done it before. The guy with the best track record, the guy with the best understanding of what the game is like here. That was Rodgers.

So, it never bothered me whether Rodgers was a mercenary or not. It never bothered me if he put himself first or not. For Rodgers to show he’s the cock of the walk, Celtic had to be successful, and I never gave a damn what his motivations were. I just see it as winning things. And Rodgers is doing that with aplomb. Whatever insults they think to throw at the Celtic boss, none of it makes a blind bit of difference. None of it changes their situation. None of it changes ours. As long as Rodgers is here, Rodgers will be winning, and Celtic will be winning as a result.

It’s up to us as a club to ensure Rodgers stays as long as possible and, when he does go, that we attempt to replace him with someone from the same bracket. And he too will be a mercenary, looking for the next rung on the ladder.

But what matters is what that guy does while he’s in the job.

Like everything else in football these days, the players will go where the most money is, and the good managers will do the same. In a mercenary business, it’s all about who can afford the best mercenaries. And that’s we win; we can afford better mercenaries.

Celtic fans just want someone who knows how to win. We don’t need a badge-kisser. We don’t need someone steeped in tradition. We’re not asking for blind loyalty. We just want points on the board. It’s all about silverware and success. And Rodgers does those things better than anyone who’s managed football in this country in a long, long time.