Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

Getting fed up with his lack of quality argument and think his Honda Civic comment today was * ridiculous to be honest.

If you look at the squad that done so well in Champions League last season and that he was constantly signing the praises of. We've lost 8 players; Bain, Taylor, Valle, Nawrocki, Welsh, Khun, Kyogo and Idah. Only 3 of them were regular starters.

Bain has been replaced by Doohan so not really much impact tbh.
Taylor has been replaced by Tierney, on paper that a vast improvement, Tierney's current form is awful tho.
Valle or Schlupp have been replaced by Sarrachi, arguably a slight improvement on both from what we have seen so far.
Nawrocki, our 5th choice CB who never played has been replaced by Pusey who is now 5th choice and never plays. Don't really see much impact to the squad there.
Welsh has been replaced by Murray, imo an improvement.
Idah has been replaced by Iheanacho. Debatabley a slight improvement but I thought Idah was pish so maybe just my opinion. Either way it's not a massive weakening of the position.
Kyogo was replaced by Jota which essentially ment Maeda was Kyogo's replacement up front with Jota taking Maeda's position. Not to many folk were complaining when Maeda was banging in goals for fun playing as our main striker last year.
Jota then got injured and we've spent over £10m on 2 guys we had apparently chased for a while as his replacement. Neither are as good as Jota but Tounekti has shown ability and Balikwisha has taken time to settle but comes with a pretty decent pedigree with goals in Europe and playing a big part in Antwerp's title win. At the very least there has been an improvement of the depth at LW.
Khun was here for 18 months and for 12 of them he was pretty poor with a fantastic 6 months spell in the middle of it. Before he had even left we signed a right winger who in the last 2 years had scored 31 goals in a decent league. However for reasons known only to himself Rodgers has decided to bench our £11m record signing so he can play the right winger as a midfielder. Clearly Nygren lacks the pace of Kuhn but from his previous club it would appear he's actually a better goal threat from RW than Kuhn was, in fact 2 of his 4 goals for us so far have came while playing RW.

Absolutely no debate we didnt do enough to improve last season's squad and push on to go further after a good season last season but outwith not replacing Kuhn with someone with similar pace I don't necessarily agree that it's massively weaker as the manager would have us believe.

Imo Rodgers isn't getting enough out of what he's got in comparison to last season and a lot of our current issues are of his own making, ie poor team selection, tactics and substitutions.

 

Aye both look better options if he wants someone to play as an inverted full back

 

I’d say the board are in 2 minds. They’d love to sack Rodgers if next week doesn’t go well but if they keep him it’ll take some heat of them and onto Brendan

 

It may come down to what Lawwell will take more pleasure in. Sacking him or watching him fail and have fans turn on him.

Look at Lawwells reaction to last minute winner v Motherwell. The * looked raging.

 

aye ange's team have been here a while

 

Many folk falling for the Brendan Brendan Brendan HOAX.

Exactly where the Board and SLT want to shift the blame to.

Brendan prophesied this at the end of August: “the manager is the one who gets it”

It’s such a poor Celtic side - as impotent as I’ve seen. The forward line are really poor. McGregor nearly finished and Hatate regressing. CCV by his peak. Tierney a clear downgrade on Taylor.

We are miles off where we were this time last year and it has been driven by not replacing the players that left and the amortisation or degradation of players who are finished or no longer want to be here. Carbon copy of Covid season.

As you were.

 

He does deserve time to sort it.. he's definitely earned that chance..

Sun is huge.. im no even bothered about the Europa

 

I think you massively underappreciate the effect of the changes since last season.

You say it's "only" 3 starters; but a football team is 11 players! 3 starters is over a quarter of a team. "Only 3" doesn't make much sense as an argument. Just the loss of Kühn, Kyogo and Taylor is a lot of attacking threat. Add to that the fact that AJ and Jota are injured and you've lost 5 players who would walk into the current team. That's literally half the outfield players.

Then, there's the clear regression of McGregor and Schmeichel as they age (especially the latter). Take that into account and you've lost 5 players we haven't replaced and have 2 more key players who are less effective as they get older: that's now 7 from 11. Add to that the massive regression with Maeda, probably caused by the board breaking a promise, and Rodgers is trying to cope with either loss of or regression to 8 key players from last season's first team.

Next, there's the "replacements". There are none. KT might be a replacement for Taylor in the LB position; but he isn't a replacement for the attributes Taylor offered, as he's a totally different player. If you change a LB like Taylor for one like KT, then you change the role of our single pivot, McGregor, to one he doesn't really have the legs for at his age. Also, the new wingers don't play on the right, so they could be amazing players (spoiler alert: they aren't) and we still wouldn't have replaced Kühn at all. With Ralston at RB and no competent RW below the age of 34, the team is now massively unbalanced. That has repercussions that ripple out through the whole team. And we have to talk about the strikers: Rodgers had to personally get Iheanacho in as a kind of replacement for Idah and we still haven't replaced Kyogo.

Finally, a lot of it is about attributes the team as a whole needs. KT might well be a better FB than Taylor defensively; but he doesn't link play as well as Taylor did and it's really obvious how much we miss that. Another key attribute we lack now is pace: compared to last season, we have lost a lot of pace in attack. Both Idah and Kyogo were faster than Iheanacho and Kühn was the fastest player in the team.

 

Dont think many, if any are falling for any hoax.

Support is pretty united that the board needs changing.

Its more nuanced than just the board though. Performances have not been good enough and rodgers end of things isnt being taken csre of either.

There are more new signings into the club now than people are acknowledging. Jota, Tierney, Nygren, Iheanacho, Balikwisha, Tounetki have come in within the last 9 months before you even get to the japanese guys.

Enough to kick us on from where we peaked last year? Clearly not. But theres enough in to provide the energy and quality needed to beat the spl level teams we enjoy huge resource advantages over.

There is no hoax. Rodgers is underperforming with this squad.

 

He's a busted flush.

And unfortunately any new manager coming in now, is going to have some job on his hands, with the shocking state of our current squad.

Our only hope is a new manager worth his salt, coming in now, who can get a tune out of this squad at least until January, and try and stay in touch of the league, and get some urgent quality additions in, during the transfer window.

It's a big if, with team morale rock bottom by the looks of it, players sidelined, and the whole atmosphere around the club stinking.

 

but for the first 4 months of last season ,the football has been brutal in his second spell . rodgers has had good players available and still put on shocking displays,just so happens he hasnt had the good players to pull something out of the bag to mask the crap displays this season

 

Fair enough points mate.

I just take real issue with him bemoaning a lack of quality or going on about not replacing players that have left when we clearly have replaced them. Khun has been replaced by a Swedish international, Rodgers just won't play him in his natural position. I would have less issue with that if Nygren was actually playing well as an 8 but he's not. Taylor has been replaced by Tierney which everyone wanted pretty much for the past 6 years.

As I said at best we've maintained the squad we haven't improved it, don't think there is any debate about that and the 2 you mention Schmichel and McGregor are definitely ones who need improved upon.

Injuries are part of football and have definitely hit us hard, again the lack of improvement over the summer means we are having to play either a kid or a donkey at RB to cover AJ.

Jota's injury was brutal but again I think we have at least covered him with Tounekti and Balikwisha.

Going back to Tierney for Taylor. That's clearly a change the manager wanted, I know he wanted to keep Taylor too but throughout his managerial career Rodgers has generally played with 2 tradition full backs. I agree that losing Taylor has had a massive impact on our style of play but that then goes back to my point about tactics. We can all see McGregor is struggling yet Rodgers sticks to playing him as a single pivot, what's even more frustrating about that is both Bernardo and Engels are more suited to playing in a double pivot than they are in the current shape.

No doubt the squad isn't as good as it should be for the amount of money we have in the bank but it can't continually be used as excuse for Rodgers to simply dial it in until his contract expires. He has to do far more than what he's doing. We had 2 shots on goal against a Dundee team bottom of the league. That's nowhere near good enough with what he has at his disposal.

 

I think he isn't motivated TBH. He will have had exciting plans in his head about replicating last season's European run and maybe getting a treble and he's come out of the window knowing that he'll do very well to win anything other than the league. The league is the bare minimum at Celtic and Rodgers doesn't get motivated by achieving the bare minimum. We all know that about him and he even warned us about exactly this in a press conference in the summer.

I also think his ego has taken a pasting and we all know he doesn't react well to that. He practically offered to sign an extension if we got in the players he needed and we essentially threw that back in his face. He publically called out a member of the board who spread lies about him in the media and that person continues in post. Finally, while the board are getting most of the blame, he'll be aware that some of it is directed at him (and I think he will feel that is very unfair).

We all know both these things about Brendan Rodgers and the board certainly knew too and yet they went ahead and did it anyway.

And the sad thing is that a motivated Brendan Rodgers with his ego given the odd stroke is an amazing manager and he did enough last season to have earned the chance to take us forward.

 

I don't think we've maintained the squad at all. We've massively regressed.

I take your point about his comments today, which I also strongly disliked. I think he had an absolute mare today and I think today's defeat is on him. FWIW, I think the draw at home to Kairat was also on him. What I don't think is on him is the fact that we are a team that lacks attacking threat.

Regarding the double pivot: Bernardo is simply not a good enough player and there's clearly something more going on with Engels that we don't know about. So we're stuck with a single pivot until January at least.

 

If the Board were to get shot of Rodgers they would just put Maloney/Kennedy in place to the end of the season hoping that we would do just enough to win the league, if so that would give them an excuse to appoint either Maloney/Kennedy to the managers job knowing fine well that they will put up with club signings, be under full control by Nicholson/Lawwell and will not question the Board's so called integrity/ambition.

 

I want him gone more so after that interview, the Honda Civic comments are * comical.

Compared to a team like Dundee who be lucky to get a skate board never mind a * push bike regarding budgets.

Time is up for him.

 

It's best for everyone if he leaves now

The players either aren't playing for him or he just can't motivate them

Nothing is going to improve

We'll be 25 to 30 points worse off than last year.Whether a new manager can salvage the season is neither here nor there

Rodgers certainly is not the man to rescue it so I really hope that he is sitting around a table with the three goons hammering out a severance deal right now