The latest Spiers podcast offers a possible, shocking, motive for Celtic’s awful January window.

After we put our own podcast up last night, I was listening to a couple of others, and at about 11 o’clock last night, I got an email telling me that Graham Spiers’ latest one was up. I like Graham’s podcast, and I’m always interested to hear what he’s got to say about things. Part of the conversation they were having was about Jimmy Thelin at Aberdeen and his situation, and another part of it was, of course, about us and Brendan’s comments in his press conference yesterday.

Those particular comments I will get to later on this afternoon—you can put money on that. Our boss does not sound like a happy camper.

The Spiers discussion was with Michael Grant, a well-known Aberdeen fan, and Ewan Murray, who is, of course, a self-described Hearts fan—although he certainly does act an awful lot like an Ibrox supporter sometimes when he’s attacking Celtic, Rodgers, and our fans. But we’ll put that aside for a moment.

A lot of it was an attempt to make rationalisations for why the board behaves the way it does. A lot of it was an acknowledgment that we have people at the club who don’t have any vision beyond simply being the best club in Scotland—which means staying ahead of a team that can barely walk forward without tripping over its own feet. This is the basis on which these people are hailed as geniuses.

To be fair to Murray, not all of the criticism he levels at our club is invalid. When he talks about the lack of imagination and ambition at Celtic, he’s on the ball. But there wasn’t much of that last night. It was all, as I said, rationalisations and faux justifications for why they let the manager down. And there wasn’t even much discussion about how Brendan feels about it all—in part because no one really knows.

We can surmise how Brendan feels. He made his frustrations pretty clear yesterday, and it’s my considered opinion that Rodgers will not stay beyond the duration of his current three-year deal.

I watched him go through this the last time he was here. I have a little knowledge of what happened, and I personally witnessed Lawwell running the guy down. I know their relationship completely toxified during the John McGinn transfer window. I saw the depths to which it had sunk at a meeting at Celtic Park with Lawwell on the day McGinn signed for Aston Villa.

That story is on this site. It has been for a long time. I published it the day Rodgers quit to move to Leicester. I was not surprised that he left. I was surprised at the timing of his departure. I was surprised that he chose to go with things still to do, and I was angry about it. Then. But now I understand him better.

I was very angry on the podcast last night, as you may have gathered if you watched it. And I know a lot of people will challenge some of the things I said, such as that Rodgers is being second-guessed by people at the club who have no business doing so. They have no qualifications on which to do it.

One of the things I’ll be asked, I’m sure, is how I know that they second-guessed him. How do I know this isn’t just well intentioned people trying and failing? How do I know that Rodgers’ decisions are routinely questioned by people at Celtic Park who have no business doing so?

Well, on Graham Spiers’ podcast last night, I heard firsthand evidence that they do this frequently—and that they believe they have that right.

Spiers mentioned a game in particular—I think it was the one involving the Ibrox club—where, as he put it, £30 million worth of signings had been left on the bench.

He and his two guests on the show were very clear that certain people in the Celtic boardroom very vocally expressed their discontent at that decision, presumably within earshot of the media. And Spiers hinted that perhaps they’re not terribly impressed by how Rodgers is utilising the squad they’ve okayed all the spending on.

(The idea that Rodgers has had lavish funds bestowed on him is actually wholly fraudulent anyway. Rodgers two summer transfer windows were not just revenue neutral; they posted profits, just as this one did. It’s farcical to suggest that this board has pushed the boat out on his behalf. They haven’t. It’s a lie.)

And maybe Spiers’ comments offer a little bit of insight as to why they might have resisted Rodgers’ demands during the window. I’m not saying that’s the reason, but it gives you a possible motive. They don’t think Rodgers has gotten enough use out of the players he’s already got. And it blows my mind to think that they have the balls to actually express that view to members of the media—or anyone else.

I’ll be just as clear as I can be here.

They have no goddamned right to question how Rodgers deploys the resources at his disposal. No right whatsoever.

They are not football people. They have no knowledge of management. They have no experience on which to make a judgment like that. And even if they were far smarter than they are, they have no business even debating or discussing in a public place what Brendan Rodgers chooses to do with the team because it undermines him. Their job is to support him, not to publicly slag him off in front of the press.

Can you even comprehend the arrogance it takes to do that? Can you even wrap your brain around how appalling that is? And if they feel comfortable doing that, what else do they do behind the scenes? What other decisions that he makes do they question, and what resistance do they offer to his plans?

One of the things I have long argued on this site—and one of the things my two podcast colleagues agree on—is that we need a clear separation between the finance guys and the football guys. We need a football department that is completely independent of the bean counters in the boardroom. A football department that runs its own show with no interference from any of them.

I’ve got news for those guys. It’s not Rodgers who’s failing to do the job. It’s not Rodgers who’s not getting stuff done. It’s not Rodgers dragging his feet for the whole of the month only to indulge in a mad scramble at the end, where the primary consideration was spending as little money as possible.

And don’t try to sell any of the fans on this idea that that’s not what happened. That’s exactly what happened. Rodgers spelled that out yesterday, and I will be talking about it at greater length later today.

And like I said, I’m not saying for sure that they made a conscious decision not to give this guy money because they don’t like how he’s used the players he’s signed so far. But if you’re looking for an explanation as to why this window has ended the way it has—is that completely unbelievable? Is that completely out of the question?

Let me ask a different question. Would you put it past them?

And if you answer that question the way I would answer it, then that’s enough, isn’t it?

Photo by Jean Catuffe/Getty Images

Our latest podcast is out. The title says it all, I think.