Rodgers looks like the wrong man in the wrong movie
BRENDAN RODGERS was all about storylines and narratives in his last big briefing before the latest outbreak of Old Firm mayhem at midday today. ‘The storyline is always opportunity,’ he ventured. The narrative, he offers, is that his Celtic side are being written off. One must beg to differ on both points.
Considering Rangers don’t have a traditional centre-forward you would trust to buy the messages without fouling up the shopping list or getting injured and lost at home to Motherwell just over a month ago, it would take a special brand of idiot to say that a Parkhead outfit with almost all of its better players available has no chance of taking something from Ibrox.
As for the real storyline in the game? Well, there’s the small business of John Beaton being the man in the middle, fresh from Rodgers insisting he has ‘always said that John Beaton is one of the top referees in the country’ — except for that one time at Tynecastle last month when he said John Beaton was incompetent and got banned.
Beaton’s display this afternoon, make no mistake about it, will come under greater scrutiny than Jerry Sadowitz’s joke book in the wake of the Hate Crime Act. However, it is more tempting to see the proper, killer storyline being one which began its arc quite some time ago.
Namely, with Rodgers’ return to Celtic Park last summer and the growing suspicion ever since that he has never been a good fit.
All eyes might be on Beaton when the action gets underway, but it’s Rodgers who has most on the line. His career at any kind of level moving forward. His reputation. His attempt at salvation after leaving Parkhead under a toxic raincloud when quitting for Leicester City back in 2019.
He is slap-bang in the middle of the bearpit today, all right, and it will be fascinating to see whether he still has the minerals to make things happen when it really, really matters — because, so far, he just hasn’t convinced.
Rodgers’ entire second spell at Celtic has been fascinating, to be perfectly honest — the general standard of the football notwithstanding.
He simply hasn’t looked or sounded like the same person who breezed into Scottish football in the summer of 2016 having taken time out after leaving Liverpool, all pearly-whites, beautiful human beings and free-and-easy Double Trebles.
He was a muted figure in the beginning, claiming publicly that he accepted other people picked and bought the players and that he was just there to coach them. It was weird. Wasn’t this the reason he jacked it in the first place, peeved over not getting John McGinn for a few million and then throwing muck at the boardroom ahead of a disastrous Champions League qualifier against AEK Athens in 2019?
He came across as being deliberately low-key, eager not to scare the horses when it was evident that a large section of the fanbase — despite the happy-clapping that marked his return to Paradise on the night of James Forrest’s testimonial — felt he should never have been invited back by major shareholder Dermot Desmond at all.
He showed a little more of his old self, a flash of the ‘terminado’ temperament, following the closure of the transfer window when admitting he had asked for four ‘quality’ players and didn’t get them. Post-January, that continued, imploring the board to show a little more ‘bravery’ in the market.
Since then, though, Rodgers (left) has moved on to exhibiting another peculiar side of himself that was never present first time round, when Rangers were still on ‘The Journey’ back from the dark side of the moon and everyone else was there to be rolled over.
Let’s face it, there hasn’t been much in the way of beautiful smiles of late. Instead, the Northern Irishman has taken on a slightly sour countenance, like a guy who isn’t really enjoying himself much. Or, perhaps, asking the question that so many of us have been agonising over since he first walked back into the Big Top circus of Scottish football: What on earth is he doing here?
For some time now, he has given the distinct impression of someone trying to foster a siege mentality. He began by stating he ‘couldn’t care less’ about what people were saying and writing about the general standard of his team’s displays — even though the harshest criticism was coming from his own fans.
Then, it turned into Celtic ‘writing their own story’ and other people writing other stories after scraping a last-gasp win at Motherwell. He wouldn’t tell the BBC’s Jane Lewis what he was on about, but it seemed, to these eyes at least, a feeble attempt to poke a stick at his Rangers counterpart Philippe Clement, who had become known for using similar terminology. It didn’t work. So, then, it became referees and Beaton and Don Robertson after that defeat at Hearts.
Now, in his final press conference before today’s hostilities, it’s back to people writing his team off the way they supposedly did ahead of the first Old Firm game of the season in September.
The problem is that this just doesn’t feel like the Rodgers we knew. As stated previously here, it just feels like someone scrambling around wildly, trying to find something, anything, to light a fire under a real damp squib of a Second Coming.
When the negotiations were being completed for the 51-yearold’s return as the highest-paid manager in the club’s history, stories broke that he had a five-year plan to take Celtic back to a European final and the backing of the board to chase that dream.
He made it clear success in UEFA competition was a driving force. And, yet, he got nothing like the signings required to achieve that. The Champions League came and went, as it always does these days, with a whimper and a faint sense of embarrassment.
And here we are now. With the defence of the league title threatening to slip from the grasp and squabbles over referees and VAR and all the rest of it threatening to overshadow everything.
When Rodgers reappeared on the scene, Rangers were in poor shape with an ill-considered appointment in the manager’s chair in the shape of Michael Beale.
Their squad still has holes in it, weak spots that only clever use of the market can repair, but Beale’s replacement Clement has delivered a good mentality, a determination to bring consistency through repetition of drills and ideas and, most importantly, results.
Win today to move two points clear having a played a game less at this late stage of the season and it will be tempting to believe the Belgian is on the brink of what looked a most unlikely title triumph when he first walked into the rubble left behind at Auchenhowie.
He has been an impressive figure over five short months. He has built momentum.
He has unified the club and fanbase. His side are understandable favourites for today’s game and the crown.
Rodgers, in contrast, feels like he has never got anywhere close to top gear at Celtic with mutiny among their supporters always bubbling dangerously close to the surface.
The Coming Man against Yesterday’s Man? It is maybe a little premature to be billing today’s match in those terms, but Rodgers, no matter what may reside on his CV, has it all to prove.
That’s the story, really. And the narrative if he loses — and goes on to concede the title — will concentrate on why he was ever brought back in the first place and what future he and Celtic can possibly share.
There have not been many smiles, he has a slightly sour countenance
A large section of the fanbase felt he should never have been invited back