Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has spoken confidently about Celtic's hypothetical chances of succeeding in the English Premier League.

The Scottish champions have dominated Scottish football for over a decade, and the Irishman believes that sustained success would be transferable among the best teams competing in England's top flight.

The trophy haul the club has enjoyed over the last decade would certainly suggest so - most recently clinching a third successive Scottish Premiership title - as would the size of the global fan base that follows the club week-in, week-out.


And while predisposed to back his side's capabilities on a larger stage, Rodgers of course speaks with more experience than most, having coached the likes of Liverpool and Leicester City at the top end of the Premier League over the last 10 years.

Speaking to TalkSport on Thursday morning, the Celtic manager said: "Celtic and Rangers, and obviously I can only talk from a Celtic perspective, is an absolutely massive club worldwide. There's no doubt if Celtic was in the Premier League it would be up there, minimum, in that top six bracket.

Rodgers then spoke of Celtic's appeal on a global basis, likening the stature of the club to the biggest names in English football.

He added: "It's absolutely incredible. Wherever you go in the world, you will meet Celtic supporters. The fan base, the history of the club, that's what makes it a truly, truly massive club

 

What is he talking about? Every single team in that league from Burnley and Luton up would wipe the floor with us. Sheffield Utd would be a closer game. They would be favourites, but we might be able to beat them if it was at CP.

 

We would beat most of the teams in England

And probably give the big 7 a go

 

I also enjoy Meth

 

The squad we have now is not what we would have if we were in that league. The increase in revenue would be massive

 

It's not just that simple, though. Sure, we would eventually have potential if we could stay in the league long enough to realise it. There are several problems with that transition though, as the vast majority of clubs that get promoted into the league from the Championship soon find out (and bear in mind that the Championship is considerably stronger than the SPL). The ones that do make the transition successfully are all run incredibly well. We are not (to put it mildly!).

 

Yip

 

All he's doing is bigging up the club, bit of a weird thing to get hung up on.

With the revenue down south, we would definitely compete with the top 6.

Also, we would pump Sheffield United, they wouldn't be favourites

 

I think he's talking nonsense, mate. I'm not saying that what you say couldn't be done; but we would need to have a very carefully worked out plan over a number of years to get to that position and that's not what Rodgers was saying.

The kind of thing he was saying makes sense for MON's team, where we basically had a top-half-of-the-EPL-quality team already and would have been challenging for the title within 3 or 4 years. It would just about make some kind of sense for WGS's team, which was scrappy as **** and would at least have survived (albeit in the bottom half) long enough to accumulate the money and infrastructure to challenge. It would have taken longer (maybe 6 or 7 years instead of 3 or 4), but definitely still doable.

Compare that with now. To have a realistic chance of just avoiding relegation, the only players we could realistically keep would be CCV, McGregor, Maeda, O'Riley and Kyogo. That leaves 6 positions all needing to be filled with real quality. Our scouting and recruitment setup that currently doesn't exist would have to be knocking it out of the park more often than not, so we'd have to be far more professional. It would need very careful planning to finance that and we'd be paying a premium now as an EPL team too and we'd have to be careful not to break FFP rules as we've seen they are quite serious about enforcing that (unless you are Manchester City, apparently). We'd probably have to do a lot of unpalatable things to get through that first few years, such as selling the naming rights to CP.

Then, after a few years, the increased revenue would start to kick in and we'd be a force, no doubt. It would definitely be doable if we were as well run as, say, Brighton. I'm saying it would be difficult; but I'm not saying it's not possible. But the quote suggests he thinks we could just rock up with the current (lack of) structure and no plan and expect not to have our * handed to us like Sheffield Utd have this season. It's ludicrous. TBF I blame Alan Brazil more than him for the leading questions.

 

I wish he'd just cut the nonsense TBH. Brazil is not the sharpest tool in the shed (I really am putting that as politely as I possibly can) and it's kind of annoying how Rodgers (who is a smart guy) allowed himself to be sucked down to that intellectual level.

I guess Rodgers is who he is. I really rate him as a manager and I'm very glad he's here. I guess I just have to accept the fact that, as the Prof usually puts it. he's a patter merchant.

 

To be the best you have to compete with the best.
While Celtic have world class fan base they can never be world class in terms of football while playing in the Scottish prem. Rodgers is right in that with the revenue that Eng Premier provides Celtic would certainly rise to the top but they would struggle to compete initially.
He likes to big himself up whenever he gets a chance & I think he is attempting to tell the world that he is still a Premier league quality manager.

 

Lotta pish imo, he's simply talking the club up

 

It's mental, our manager, rightfully, bigs up our club, saying we could compete down south and you have people jumping at what he says.

You can tell there's still a few people in our support that can't take to him still, it's a bit sad.