Dress it up how you like, Brendan, but the pressure is ALL on you
NICE TRY, for sure, but who is Brendan Rodgers trying to kid with that baloney about Rosenborg being the team under ‘huge pressure’ in the Lerkendal Stadium on Wednesday night? They are not the club paying an estimated £2.5million a year to their manager. Or shelling out £4.5m transfer fees for 21-year-olds from Manchester City’s clearance department.
And their major shareholder did not celebrate last season’s championship triumph by insisting the last 16 of the Champions League was the next target.
Europe is why Rodgers is at Parkhead. Plain and simple. If winning the title by a country mile and being turned over by Norwegians was in any way accepted as the new way of things, Ronny Deila would still be doing the ‘roar’ at a ground near you and then heading back to Erskine to give ‘Delilah’ laldy on the karaoke — at considerably more agreeable rates.
Rodgers is at Celtic to demand and deliver, as stringpuller-in-chief Dermot Desmond puts it, ‘continuous improvement’.
He will be the guy under more pressure than anyone when battle commences in Trondheim — a pressure at least as great as anything he has experienced during his time in Glasgow so far.
The only way, really, to build upon a season that delivered a domestic Treble and that title of ‘Invincibles’ is to make a stronger fist of it in the Champions League group stage, where meetings with Barcelona, Manchester City and Borussia Moenchengladbach last season brought two points and some performances of promise.
That is certainly where Rodgers wants to be, needs to be. The safety net of the Europa League is not even for contemplating right now.
Losing to Rosenborg and tumbling unceremoniously into the play-off round of that competition would be a disaster.
It would not exactly derail the project, but it would certainly leave it toiling to get out of reverse.
Sure, Rodgers went through hell in the play-off round away to Hapoel Be’er Sheva a year ago.
However, his team went there defending a 5-2 first-leg lead and managed to cling on for dear life.
Against Rosenborg, the teams tied at 0-0 following initial skirmishes at Parkhead, an entirely different challenge lies ahead.
The unavoidable truth, though, is that Celtic should not lose.
Money is what makes the Champions League go round — be it the naked greed of the big clubs seeking to make it a closed shop, the riches on offer in that group stage and beyond, or the outlay required to give yourself a fighting chance of living its dystopian dream.
Money buys you better players. Money ought to buy you success. Celtic have spent at a level where their shareholders and board can expect regular visits to the promised land for as long as the ‘Champions Route’ is in place during the qualifying section.
Rosenborg are not in the same ballpark. According to figures released late last year, their head coach, Kare Ingebrigtsen, earned a little over £300,000 during the 2015 tax year. He may be on more now, but he has a distance to go before he is duelling with Rodgers over who pays for the post-match bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay.
In that same list, captain Mike Jensen was reported to have earned £290,000, with defender Tore Reginiussen next in line on £230,000.
Since then, of course, Rosenborg have opted, quite inexplicably, to make Nicklas Bendtner their highest-paid player on a reported £460,000-a-year.
Placing that in context, the respected Global Sports Salaries survey released by Sporting
Intelligence in October put the average annual wage — yes, the average — of Celtic’s first-team players at £717,860.
Big wages demand big results. Knocking out Rosenborg in the third qualifying round does not come into that category, no matter how much the hyperbole may build over the next 72 hours.
That should be a relative formality. The Europa League is Rosenborg’s level now, having spent a decade away from the Champions League group stage.
The loss of Moussa Dembele and Leigh Griffiths from the first leg was a blow to Celtic. Having managed just two shots on target at Parkhead, getting Griffiths back from injury is an understandable matter of priority.
Rodgers has sparked debate by insisting he cannot — when he plays just one man up front — have a third quality striker at the club because of the level of the domestic league. It is a fair point.
But it does make you wonder why Nadir Ciftci is still on the payroll and what is going on in the youth system, from which players often stepped up on meaningful European nights. Cillian Sheridan played against Manchester United at 19. Craig Beattie started against Barcelona at 20. Tony Watt got a game against Barcelona and did all right. Should Celtic really be an injury and a suspension away from having nobody to field up front?
This would only be part of the inquisition facing Rodgers should Celtic slip up in Norway.
He remains up there beside Pope Francis, Saint Henrik of Helsingborg and the Blessed Martin on the mantelpieces of many for now, but that can change quickly.
There are already grumblings in the air. The west of Scotland has been a unquestioning place of joy and bonhomie for the Northern Irishman so far, from love-ins with Rangers fans in the Clyde Tunnel to tying the knot on Loch Lomond.
He is 90 minutes away from a taste of the flipside.