GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MARCH 16: Brendan Rodgers, Manager of Celtic, looks on prior to the William Hill Premiership match between Celtic FC and Rangers FC at Celtic Park on March 16, 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
Today at the press conference – because of the weekend’s opponents, no doubt although I’m sure there were reporters who’ve had this one locked and loaded for weeks – Rodgers got the inevitable question: “Do you expect the challenge from Ibrox to be bigger next season?”
It’s the standard put-down. The line of attack they always go for to diminish everything he achieves. Nowhere does this guy get the credit he deserves.
He’s nominated for Manager of the Year and should sweep it, but I have a sneaking suspicion they’ll find some way to take it away from him and give it to David Gray. He’s been getting these questions since his return. He got them at the end of last season too. Naturally, he’s getting them again now.
“See you in May,” was his response when I asked him at his first press conference back at the club what he had to say to those who claimed he hadn’t faced a challenge last time he was here. Bear in mind, he’d already seen off a couple of managers in that previous spell and had seven trophies from seven.
Still the question was waiting for him. Still the suggestion that he hadn’t actually achieved anything was being thrown in his face.
Season comes and goes. In the closing stretch of it – after it became clear we were going to get over the line, after yet another Ibrox manager had been sacked and another was facing the sack – the question gets put to him again. And once more, there are people insisting that their team is a shambles, but that next season will be different. And so, once again, Rodgers has to put up with the insult.
I was given the chance to ask him again. I said to him, “they claimed in the summer that you’d never faced anyone before. Now they’re saying that next season you’ll finally face a challenge. That this time, we’ll see the “real Ranjurs.”
And he looked at me and said, “This time they’ll see the real Celtic.”
The inference being that their wee fantasy only lasted as long as it did because we went through a rocky patch this campaign – and that this season’s side was going to set it all right, sweep the board and win the Treble.
We are one game – the Scottish Cup final – away from accomplishing that mission.
We’ve seen the real Celtic this season.
So of course, having seen the real Celtic, they’re now back to suggesting that next season will be the one where we finally see the “real Ranjurs.” That this time, the Ibrox club will actually mount a challenge and put him in his place.
So yeah, he’s not keen on the question. Who would be, when it’s the same one over and over and over again? Especially when all of them are missing the point: it doesn’t matter what the club across the city does. It only matters what we do.
Brendan is tired of this narrative. He’s tired of it being tossed at him every few months. Tired of constantly hearing that the next Ibrox team will be the one to finally test him. But he’s not testing himself against one club. The test is against every club in this league, and Rodgers just keeps coming out on top.
They still haven’t learned that. They still haven’t grasped the fundamental point – this isn’t one man against one man, one club against one club. If it was, then yeah, we’d have to win on Sunday.
But as I said earlier this week, it does not matter what happens with their takeover. They still need to put out a team that can win – on average – 30 games in a league season. Ninety points is the minimum required to take a title from our hands.
Anything less, and it’s just a waste of their time, because 90 is our benchmark. Ninety is the target we hit over and over again, and anyone who wants to stop us needs to hit that – and then some.
If we hit our groove, then the title is ours to lose.
Because no other team in this country can keep up with our consistency. And so it stops being about them at all and becomes all about us.
The story of Scottish football over the past 20 years is almost entirely about Celtic. That’s not an accident. Even the part that is about Ibrox is the part mired in scandal and cheating.
I know whose record I’d rather be defending.
“Talk to me in the summer on that,” he said archly when the question was put to him today. “We’re not even finished this season yet. You know, I know there’s not a lot for you to write about or talk about or speak about. Speak about this season first. Speak about how good Celtic have been and how consistent we’ve been and how our mentality has been really good. And how this group of players, despite some knockbacks, they keep going and they keep fighting and they keep running and they keep working and we can speak about next season then.”
That’s a man who’s heard this question about as many times as he can stand it – not that he was ever interested in hearing it in the first place. His own record is forever being questioned. His ambition constantly cast into doubt. He’s always being told that the next big thing is coming from across the city.
But Rodgers just keeps his composure, keeps on managing, keeps putting out winning teams, and keeps piling up the trophies.
I don’t think that’s going to change.
Neither does he.
Just goes to prove, as if we needed proof, of how petty and partisan the SMSM is.
The stenographers, never journalists in a million years, are just fanzine typists for the Establishment’s Phoenix Klub.
They don’t care about the rest of the Clubs in the Scottish Game. Their contempt oozes from every line they type. It’s all about The Tribute Act and their supposed top dog fantasy.
They would rather undersell our game, mock its players and standards than give proper credit to Celtic, Brendan and our Squad. They are that conceited and enmeshed in their Ibrox Supremacist, Entitlement Dogma that they even fail to recognise, or rather want to forget’ , that its the smaller Clubs that are regularly besting their Champions-in-waiting. Even Baawwie the Ned’s Ned has confirmed that there is no fear factor anymore for the St Mirrens, Motherwell Hibees and even Queens Park. He bemoans the lack of deference from, as he sees it, the minnows in the game.
Here’s hoping it persists. They aren’t changing anytime soon and that is their biggest fault.
The very fact that people are questioning it, is because of the recent record against Sevco. You can argue because of the Trebles, they shouldn’t but people will and if Mourinho couldn’t beat the latest mob from Ibrox then BR has his work cut out on Sunday.
It didn’t help that the players seemed terrified, Scales and Hatate being the worst, and this is going to be a big factor again.
There is also the strange behaviour of the two centre backs who continued to play the ball between them when they were behind as if they were playing for time despite BR screaming at them to move it forward.
If they can neutralise the threat of Tavernier’ crosses and Cerny’s dribbling then they can do it. Personally I think they will.
If anyone thinks this is being negative then it is because the last two times I have been over confident of skelping them.
BR should take this seriously because it will impact, rightly or wrongly, on the way people will look back on his tenure. Sue me.
If Brendan becomes a little bit less pig headed tactical wise I.e. becomes more flexible tactical wise then he has a chance – Lump the ball over the Sevco midfield to the speedy forwards and we will be home and hosed…
But will he is the question –
Regardless he has a helluva few losses to amass yet before he goes into negative equity v head to head wind v The Sevco Huns !
Agree Clach , it’s the reason the other teams are getting results against sevco , the sevco keepers rarely play out from the back , they kick it up the park knowing we will build slowly giving them time to get in our faces .
“Do you expect the challenge from Ibrox to be bigger next year?”
He might as well be honest and flatly say “no”
As ever, they want to diminish what’s actually happening here, we’re winning all the trophies and their doing what Stevie Griffin describes in Family Guy, “you’re like the Dominican Republic, always killing the guy in charge and saying: this new guy, this new guy is going to get it right”
“Do you expect the challenge from Ibrox to be bigger next year?”
You had better ask them that, as I have no idea what they are planning….should have been his answer.
We’re going to need an article to talk about the new strip and the ‘authentic’ version for £120
Brilliant answer by Brendan to The Scummy’s…
He has more decency in one fuckin pubic hair than those bastards do in their every fibre of their stinking beings !
Rodgers has too much class for these fools.