Rodgers is facing his toughest test
LET’S cut through all the nonsense, shall we? Moussa Dembele is not unsettled, unnerved or ‘affected by transfer speculation’. He wants to leave.
He’s done what he set out to do with Celtic and now he wants to cash in, move on, shake the dust of Scottish football from his boots and get on with performing at a level more in keeping with his talents.
So muffle all talk of Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers being under ‘scrutiny’ over his attempts to build a Europa League-ready central defence.
The Dembele issue is the one that will preoccupy the Northern Irishman more than any other between now and the end of January. This is the one he absolutely must get right.
As ever, Rodgers will not be short of advice on how to handle the young Frenchman with the oh-sovaluable footballing attributes.
Among those of us several steps removed from the decisionmaking process, the natural temptation is to allow righteous indignation and chippy patriotism to override common sense.
Yes, it’s easy for all of us to take the first sign of disrespect towards the Scottish game as an invitation to let fly.
Playing for the biggest and most powerful team in the country isn’t good enough for you? Oh, it’s like that, is it? Damned cheek. Utter impertinence. Off you pop — and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Let’s see how life in Brighton measures up to your delusions of grandeur…
Hold that dudgeon. Crank it down from high to medium for just a minute or two. Because nothing about the Dembele situation is quite so simple.
Should Celtic allow Dembele to leave, even for a thumping clubrecord fee, they’ll need to find a replacement.
In the frenzied January window, that won’t be easy. Scratch that. It could prove impossible.
The original Dembele deal, you’ll recall, was a wrinkle in the fabric of a market designed to protect the haves from incursion by the have-nots.
He shouldn’t have been available to a Scottish club. Even the richest and most ambitious outfit north of the Border.
But the quirks of compensation rules brought him into play. And Celtic were able to convince the player, not to mention his agent, that this was a smart move.
Everyone knew the ground rules. Dembele would come up to Scotland, score a zillion domestic goals, win a load of trophies and — crucially — shine in the Champions League.
Then he’d follow the route taken previously by Virgil van Dijk, Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster etc.
Call it a gentleman’s agreement? Ah, perhaps that would set off too many alarm bells for Celtic fans who remember a similar nod-andwink understanding with Paolo di Canio — he of the ‘leetle problem’, enormous talent and gigantic ego.
Football is not a sport for gentlemen. Certainly not when it comes to contracts.
In the time it has taken for Dembele to establish himself, the Van Dijk move to Liverpool — further boosting the manager’s bullish view of his players’ market value — has shifted the parameters somewhat.
The last thing Celtic want is to sell a star player, even one so clearly disinterested in carrying on, for a price swiftly made to look like a steal. Their reputation for being one of the smartest clubs in the land won’t allow that.
Player and club, then, are in a no-fault situation, as the lawyers would put it. They each have good reason to believe themselves in the right. Neither will be in a mood to back down.
Enter Mr Rodgers. Even those who claim — wrongly — that the Celtic manager has an easy job will recognise that, in somehow coaxing Dembele’s appetite for destruction back towards its peak, he’s got a serious job on his hands.
Let the scrutiny commence. Hey, it’s part of football. If you don’t want to be second-guessed, questioned or criticised, go work in an industry where nobody pays any attention. Politics or something.