Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

I don't think the latter is anywhere in BR's DNA.
It is the board who are engineering his exit, not the other way around.
Their strategy is pinning the blame on him for the CL exit and * him off - I don't believe even they deliberately planned the extent of their miserable performance regarding the final day of the window; their arrogance was such that they thought they at least had Dolberg 'in the bag'. So they are deflecting and working behind the scenes (PL to Sun) to discredit Rodgers so that they * him off.
At this point, continue to spread the rumour and inuendo and effectively 'invite' teams such as Forest to come in with a compensation package to allow him begrudgingly (sic) to leave, while endorsing the negativiy of 'it's not us, it's him'. So their goal is get rid of him and actually get paid to do so, vs sacking him and having to pay out his contract.
For Bendan's part, I truly believe he will stick to his declared repeated assurance that he will not quit. The ultimate test of this would be if a Notts Forest (for example) comes in for him - I think - and hope - that if such arises, he says nope, not interested and forces the board's hand on it.
If he leaves for another job, the board receives compensation. If they sack him, they have to pay him out. That's a significant swing for one vs the other.

 

And we all know its all about the money with that bunch of shysters

 

Will Brendan be the next Forest manager or will big Ange be appointed?

 

No

 

Wouldn't begrudge him if he snapped it up.

 

I think he would be a good fit. He must know his number is up here.

 

Go from one awfully run club to another.

 

Just to get out of here id not hold it against him, but I dont think for a second he'd ever be interested in the Forrest job.

If he had been out of work for months than aye, he'd jump into straight away, but I just dont think whilst employed still and sitting in a position where he has some control, for now, over protecting his image because of how we are run by the board - that he'd risk leaving out set up to then go to something equally bizarre in Forrest.

It's a lazy connection but Ange surely has to be favourite for the job.

 

I don’t blame Rodgers. He needs to buckle down with the players we have and somehow win the league and qualify for the knockout out stages of the Europa league. A Tall order to be fair.
What * me off is the money i spend on a season ticket, home cup scheme and European tickets, to witness the utter * transfer business, window and seeing the team I am paying good money to support actually be downgraded from last season. This is NOT acceptable in any customer/business transaction situation. The fact that the board can’t see that they have shortchanged and taken the paying customers for total mugs and then try and deflect it is ludicrous. They clearly don’t care or worse DO NOT appreciate the sacrifices that the fans are paying to support their club whilst the board and very well paid employees fail to do the basics and improve the 1st team and squad each and every season, IN TIME to qualify for the top tier European football competition. Have some integrity, own up to the fact that this window and previous have been shocking, take responsibility and make changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

 

I think he will come out and be "excited and positive" and refuse to go into talk about transfers as the window is closed. And i think this will be what is best for the rest of the season.

 

I'm really interested to see how he answers the questions on the report regarding him dividing the club.

Most likely will just be him saying it's speculation etc etc and he's just focusing on the football side of things. But it's a tough article to just dismiss.

 

It's astounding how many people seemingly have conveniently forgotten the nature of who this guy is. Given the acrimonious nature of his mid-season departure in 2019, there is nothing that is going to convince me that he did not ensure that there was an argreement set in stone in his contract when he was negotiating to return, regards transfer/budget/allowance etc, and he knows 100% how to work the media. The one thing he will not want is a repeat of the way in which he was villified last time he left.

BR is a smart guy, but he has been able to skate by with doing the absolute bare minimum since the turn of the year, if not before. And considering this current turmoil, if there is one guy who will be privately smiling when he thinks ahead about when he does slither out this time around, irrespective of how this season unfolds, it will be him.

We all want Celtic to be successful, and so far as Rodgers goes, this is the season where he can prove his status and secure his legacy as an elite manager. The question remains though, can he actually do it?

 

There was clearly nothing in his contract about budgets because if there was, he'd sue the club for breach of contract.

If you think the money men gave him contractual guarantees with regards to any budgets, you're in proper tin hat territory. Was he given assurances by the hierarchy? Probably. That's very different to contractual guarantees.

 

It might not have been for every year, it might have been a minimum figure over the course of the 3 year deal he agreed (I don't know obviously, but that is just an example), but it is 100% logical. Let's just say, for argument's sake, that figure was £40m and he has already gone through that, then there would not be a breech. £25m alone on Engels, Trusty and Idah, for instance. Whether there was a further re-investment assured from sales is another matter entirely, but it makes sense.

If you left a high profile job in highy acrimonious circumstances and burnt a lot of bridges having cited a particular issue as the main cause, and then when that employer came back to you 4 years later, cap in hand, and asked you to return, are you seriously telling me, you wouldn't want to ensure of that there is some security in that? Between BR (who is not an idiot), his agent and legal representation, that they would not have negotiated and inserted some stipulation into that before he would've agreed to return, then seriously, that is just pure niavety.

 

No. Naivety would be believing that a board, who are incredibly controlling and have shown that over the last few 2 decades, would be willing to give a manager contractual guarantees about transfers/wage budgets.

I get it. You don't like Rodgers. You haven't forgiven him for the way he left the last time. That's fine. Let's stop pretending that his ego or anything else is stronger than any other ego that's sitting on the board and his ego is certainly no bigger than Dermot Desmonds.

 

The Club went cap in hand to him when they were seeking someone to take over after Ange, not the other way around. That again provides for that wxtra bargaining chip at the negotiating table.

And yes, there remains a degree of cynicism and suspicion regarding Rodgers, his motives and actions. I want him to do well, because it means Celtic are doing well, but that does not mean that you forget or not take into account the evidence that is there.

I also understand there there are systemic problems in the running of the football club as a whole. You probably don't give sweet * adams about the women's team, but many of the issues that have been discussed and highlighted in recent weeks are of a higher profile because it involves the men's team, when those same issues are all too evident there for the women also, which again points to the way that the club is being run in concert with the actual management of the respective teams cannot be forgotten about either.

 

I think you're way off the mark on a few points there. Yes we all know how Brendan left the first time round. He himself has referenced it many times. However, the whole reason he returned was to make amends for that and do the best for a club he loves. And for me there's no doubting he loves Celtic.

I do not agree for one second that he's done the bare minimum since the turn of the year either. We put in a brilliant performance away to Bayern, won the league comfortably and lost the Scottish Cup final. * happens we were close to a treble but didn't manage it. Can't win them all. That was Brendan's first ever defeat at Hampden and even then it was on penalties.

Brendan could have walked after the summer window. No one would have blamed him. But there is absolutely no debating our board and recruitment team have absolutely * the bed this summer and left Brendan with a squad not fit for the Champs League qualifiers and even worse we don't even have a squad fit for the Europa League now. Do you honestly think Brendan somehow engineered this or would be 100% committed to the last year of his contract for it to end in a failure of a season? Do you think he wants the legacy of his last year in charge to be a season where he oversaw Rangers winning the league? Of course not. To suggest otherwise that he'd be happy to "slither out" after domestic failure and complete disharmony between board and fans is ridiculous. He absolutely does not wish for nor planned for that. He wanted improvement in the squad and for the board to show ambition in the window and he got neither. That's not his fault.

If he finishes this season with a league win and anything else on top of that it will be a miracle and in spite of the horrendous backing from above him. You can cite money spent on players while he's been here but the fact remains that the board still turn a profit on transfers every single season.

 

Since the turn of the year...

Celtic have won 1 of 6 games in European competition. That 1 win was scraped 1-0 against Young Boys, back in January, a Young Boys team who had lost all 6 of their CL games to that point, were sitting 9th in the Swiss league at the time and were on their 3rd manager of the season at that point.

Have not beaten Sevco in over a year during actually playing football. Setting the League Cup aside dur to penalities and as we all know penalties are a complete lottery. So, 0 wins in the last 5 games against a team that he once had such a grip against, and 4 of those have been since the start of this year against a Sevco team that have had plenty of issues of their own during this time.

Signings or not, Celtic should have at least been able to score 1 goal against Kairat over 2 legs. A significant part of the reason why not was the tactics. The same formation and tactics that have not changed. And here is the kicker, the Kairat manager clearly did his homework on Celtic, not entirely sure the same can be said of BR in this instance. You know how you can tell? Kairat set themsevles uo EXACTLY the same as how Stephen Robinson did with ST M in the first game of the season. Robinson even had Jayden Richardson play out of position at RB, so that his pace was there to contend with Maeda. Never mind trying to use his pace going forward, it was done to try to deal with Maeda, and it is no co-incidence that Celtic scored that late goal against St M, when Maeda was able to find that bit of space after Richardson was forced off. Kairat did the exact same thing with Aleksandr Mrynskiy, normally RM/RW, played at RB on the night for the exact same reason.

When you play the exact same formation with the exact same tactica, teams can predict and plan and work out ways of contending with that. Which begs the question, what was BR doing during the off-season and especially pre-season, because it has been the exact same with diminishing returns. Nothing new, no apparent change tweaked or a Plan B in evidence.

Set pieces are something else that are a joke. Again, pre-season great opportunity to work on things like this for situations when a goal, any goal can be the difference. From Jan 6 to today there have been 288 corner kicks. 1 goal scored. It is estimated across all professional football at the top level that a goal every 30 corner kicks is average, and about 3% of all goals come from corners. Celtic are currently going about less than 0.3%.

The 2 Scottish Cup games at Hampden, in the SF against ST J, a team who had beated Celtic just 2 weeks before, a team who were ultimately relegated last season, and in the Final, again the lottery of penalties. Even had we won the Cup that day, a treble including winning both Cups by virtue of spotkicks hardly resonates of dominance.

In the last 20 league games in the 2024/25 season (since the turn of the year to end of season), Celtic accrued 42 points. Sevco and Hibs both accrued 40 points in that same period. Hibs with a * of a lot less resources and a Sevco team who sacked 1 manager and were being coached by the Marx Brothers, and could not win a game at Ipox for like 7-8 straight. And Celtic only marginally better than that.

These are all hard facts.

When you take all of that into account it does suggest that in 2025 he has not been doing a great deal more than writing out a team sheet and answering mostly softball/predictable questions from the press.

I am not debatig the fact that the Club Executive have let the club, the team (both Men and Women's for that matter) and the supporters down massively over the past few months and should be totally held accountable, not to mention that completely BS statement that they came out with which was totally defend the indefensible. And, fons et origo, the current climate of discontent is one of their making.

But that does not mean that the manager should be given a free pass in all of this for the performances of the team and he should be held accountable for that. And as you say, if he had or does walk away a lot will not blame him which is in stark contrast to how things played out in 2019, but he is still being paid £3m p.a. as a supposed elite manager and as such this season ahead is totally his opportunity to prove that, given all the adversity and maelstrom, that he can still coach and improve the team, read oppositions and know how to change things, not just with substitutions (which are totally a viable way obviously) but also with identifying problems and being able to come up with fresh ideas and solutions in how to contend with these and provide the leadership that seemingly is lacking in other areas of the Club at the moment.

If he can do that, if he can once again given all we have been witnessing and can still make it happen, this isthe seaosn in which his legacy will deserve to be secured, because, aside from the 2016/17 Invincibles, there is plenty to question about it as it currently stands. That isn't just the cynic, that is factually and substantially based.

 

It doesn’t matter that the club went cap and hand to him. They didn’t by the way, they simply asked if he would be willing to take on the role again and he said he would be interested. He had 3 millions reasons a year to sign the deal and I bet none of them had anything to do with any contractual guarantees when it came to transfer budget or wage budget.

There’s also another element to him signing the deal that the likes of yourself, who clearly don’t like him for leaving the way he did the first time around, don’t want to take into consideration. I think he wanted to come back here and make it all ok. He wanted to make amends. His family loved being up here; he was managing the club he supported as a boy and he secretly hated the way it turned out. Is that massaging his ego? Most likely. He wanted the love in, again: he wanted to hear the fans chant his name. That’s my take on it. Come up here, be exceptionally well paid and fix the issues that have hampered your status here for the last few years. Win titles, become a legend. That’s exactly what he wanted, in my opinion.