Rodgers said nothing controversial on Maeda. No Celtic site should be claiming otherwise.

I don’t like to criticise Celtic sites — not normally. But since Mark Hendry washed up at 67 Hail Hail, some of the garbage he’s written on there has been unbelievable. It really brings down the overall standard of the site, where a good friend of mine, Paddy Sinat, writes frequently and well.

Hendry is one of the folks in the Scottish sports media to think he can speak with authority on what Celtic fans are thinking. His article this afternoon, where he claimed Rodgers has dropped a “hint” about the upcoming transfer window that Celtic fans won’t like, is absolute clickbait rubbish. It doesn’t belong on a Celtic fan site, because it certainly doesn’t reflect any Celtic fan’s opinion.

First of all, this is neither news nor a proper story. He’s interpreted Rodgers’ comments — and although he’s probably done so correctly — he’s taken a gigantic leap in logic to pretend he somehow knows what Celtic fans think about them.

Rodgers said what this blog said before him: that it’ll be incredibly difficult to replace Maeda as a central striker by bringing someone else in. To spend a fortune on someone like Kvistgaarden — who we don’t even know can do what Maeda does — only to find out he can’t do what Maeda does, would be a colossal waste.

But it’s not a news story, and Rodgers most certainly didn’t “drop any hints”. He spoke in clear and unambiguous language. This wasn’t code. He said the words quite plainly — and he made those comments earlier in the week. They’ve been extensively covered by every other fan site, including 67 Hail Hail itself, where better writers than Hendry approached the story more sensibly.

We know Maeda can score goals for fun. We know he can play as a central striker and do things other players simply aren’t able to do. The plan has changed — but not in any way that Celtic fans will be concerned about.

By and large, Celtic fans understand what Rodgers is saying, and most of us had reached that conclusion before he even said it aloud. We would all prefer to see Maeda play through the middle now. We’d all like to see him start as a central striker come the beginning of next season.

Certainly, we need to sign a backup striker — that’s a fact. We should have three on the books, minimum. But Rodgers is right. With the players we have available, it’s easier for us to go out and get a top-class winger than it would be to find a better striker than Maeda.

I’m not all that bothered about what Hendry writes most days. I’ve read a lot of it, and it’s clickbait nonsense recycling stories from elsewhere — some of which are days or even weeks old. What pisses me off is when he uses a Celtic fan site to stir up trouble at the club, to attempt to cause problems, to make out like there’s going to be some rift between the fans and the manager if the manager doesn’t go out and blow a fortune on a forward.

I had a laugh reading Hendry’s bio on the site. His claim that he’s a Greenock Morton fan is hilarious — in the same way I get a good chuckle out of all the other spivs out there who pretend to be neutral by picking some inoffensive team to pretend to support.

I though I’d read enough of Hendry to know where his allegiances lay; I’m told he’s actually a Celtic fan, which should go down well with the readers of the Ibrox site he also writes on and edits.

But I’ll tell you, I didn’t always agree with everything John McGinley wrote when he was editor of 67 Hail Hail. But McGinley cares about the club and I know nothing he wrote would ever have been pitched at the level that Hendry pitched that piece today — which was to create a controversy where none exists, to invent problems that aren’t there, and to stir up divisions where there should be none.