BUT HOW LONG WILL BRENDAN GO THROUGH THE EURO MOTIONS?
IT says much about the changing mood around Celtic, the sense of reduced ambition, that making it to the group stage of the Champions League is now being painted as something akin to Odysseus’ ten-year trek back to Ithaca after the fall of Troy.
This is a club that, not so long ago, was perfectly vocal in setting a target of becoming a regular participant in the knockout stages of the club game’s most prominent competition. Now, all you seem to hear is how battling through four games against teams from Norway and Armenia and suchlike would represent some kind of epic achievement.
Sure, this early-season tour of football’s forgotten lands delivers its own little challenges, but it is hardly up there with blinding Polyphemus and escaping the island of the Cyclops.
There are no giants to slay here. AEK Athens, visitors to Parkhead on Wednesday, are not what they were. The play-off round — with Qarabag, Malmo, Young Boys and Red Star Belgrade looking like being the unseeded teams — is nothing to fear. Celtic fans, given the wage bill at their club, should anticipate seeing their team in the draw for the competition proper at the end of the month.
Yet, even they seem to be buying into the narrative that UEFA are making it harder and harder for them to access the riches of the group stage — even though the truth is that the introduction of another qualification round was offset somewhat by the retention of the ‘Champions route’, which prevents a repeat of past winnertakes-all meetings with the likes of Arsenal.
Doing something meaningful in Europe no longer appears to even be a subject of conversation far less an objective. More and more, the focus seems to be turning inwards to winning the domestic title above all else.
Brendan Rodgers, intentionally or not, has been feeding into that.
No doubt putting his side’s habit of losing anywhere up to seven goals a time in European games into context, the manager speaks regularly about the financial disparity between Celtic and the teams at the very top.
Now, he is saying his squad is weaker than it was last year, which merely casts light on some of his less impressive dealings in the market in addition to the obvious difficulties of bringing in quality on a budget.
This is all very well, but, sooner rather than later, it is going to lead to a pretty obvious question being asked: What is the exact point of Rodgers still being at Parkhead?
Go back to the night before Celtic earned an excellent 1-1 draw away to Borussia Monchengladbach in November 2016. Rodgers, then very clearly in control of the direction of travel, was insistent when asked about the target of constructing a side that could compete in the last 16 of the Champions League.
‘I think that was the aim for me to come here — to really build the club and for us to qualify for the Champions League and to get out of the group stages and see how far we can go there,’ he said.
‘It is a building process over the next three or four years, to get to a position where we arrive at these games knowing we’ve a great chance of getting a result.
‘I would hope Celtic are a last-16 team in two or three years’ time.’
If that is still the aim, it doesn’t feel like it. The last 16 seems further away than ever. Is the team of today any stronger than it was when drawing home and away to Manchester City? Can we already say that the project has veered considerably off-track? Certainly, the trajectory Celtic appear to be on at the moment seems more dangerous for Rodgers than anyone else.
He has shown in Glasgow that he can bring huge improvement from individual players. He has enhanced his CV following a difficult end to his time at Liverpool. However, there are issues.
There is pressure on the board from outside — and maybe even inside — to spend more money. Yet, with a manager who wants to keep playing attacking football rather than parking the bus, they will never, ever have the finances that are required to buy the players capable of doing that in the Champions League. Unless they become more defensive, they are going to lose time and again to teams with better players. They already have a sizeable wage bill. Can they afford to pile added millions onto it purely for the sake of winning the Premiership every year? They have already spent £9million on a striker. Why should they pay more than £2m for John McGinn of Hibs, for example, when he can be signed on a pre-contract in January? Might the board also question, somewhere down the line, whether they need to keep paying £2.5m-ayear or more for a manager when winning the league and simply negotiating the European qualifiers is as good as it gets? Make no mistake, Rodgers is a fine coach. He almost won the English Premier League with Liverpool and must surely feel he has unfinished business down south. Yet, will hanging around much longer at Celtic really increase his chances of landing a decent job there? His recent remarks about transfers and squad strength do hint at a man less preoccupied with the romance of managing the club he supported than facing the reality of trying to punch above your weight against the backdrop of a home market of low-grade TV revenue and limited opportunities for growth. What happens to his reputation, the view of him among English chairmen and chief executives, should Celtic make the group stage again and find themselves once again being ragdolled by PSG or Barcelona — or even being comfortably beaten at home by Anderlecht? Should he suffer his very own Greek tragedy against AEK, the damage could be even deeper. Rodgers is smart enough to see all this. He must be asking questions himself. He is too talented to simply restrict himself to fulfilling fans’ desires to see him hang around long enough for Ten-In-A-Row at the expense of everything else. These are interesting times at Celtic. The club may be on its own decade-long odyssey to rewrite domestic history, but, the way things look in a wider context, it is becoming increasingly hard to see the wisdom of Rodgers staying with them until journey’s end.