BRENDAN RODGERS CELTIC STATEMENTS WERE SHOCKING, BUT ALSO LONG OVERDUE
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Aug 2
- 4 min read
If I had a pound for every comment I’ve read over the last few days about Celtic that is some variation on “sleepwalking into a crisis”, well, I’d almost have enough money to buy all the new merch Celtic have launched this summer. Almost, but not quite.
When Brendan Rodgers spoke at his Celtic press conference this week on the need for “progress” rather than “maintenance”, I think he spoke for pretty much every frustrated fan out there. Me Included.
I took a day off from writing yesterday in order to come at this with a clear head. So, here goes...
Brendan Rodgers Celtic Future Rests on The Next Two Weeks of Activity
Everyone has their breaking point, the time at which they need to stop being patient, polite and diplomatic, and just tell it like it is.
Brendan Rodgers' Celtic Press Conference did that on Thursday. The ball is now very much in the Celtic Board’s court. Stop the childish in-fighting, or whatever is going on in the background. We could be about to chase away one of the best managers we’ve had in recent history, for the 2nd time, because Celtic as a club fail to match his own ambitions.
This just isn’t acceptable. I think my good friend Jarrod over on Celtic Down Under summed it up best last week when he said “We are in a digital world, but we still operate like an analogue club.
So many of our current problems step from an inability, or perhaps I should say an unwillingness to communicate. The Celtic Board have been embarrassed on at least a couple of occasions this summer, with the added hyperbolic help of the Scottish media, of course, because they simply haven’t offered the money that clubs want for their players.
From my days working as a teacher in the private sector in Osaka, I can remember how frustrating it was trying to explain to a school manager why the dusty old textbooks with pages falling out of them needed replaced.
Ultimately, the school would sign up more students and make a lot more money, if they just spent this little bit extra to improve their service.
Alas, my calls fell on deaf ears then, just as Brendan Rodgers' similar pleas for support seem to be being ignored now.
Yes, I just compared the Celtic Board to an English conversation school middle manager, because honestly the level of incompetence and basic business illiteracy is the same.
It is a fundamental law of economics that you have to invest to generate income. No real estate tycoon would stop at building one block of flats, would they?
No, you take the money you’ve made from selling or renting that first block and use it to build more, in more affluent areas, and generate even more money, and so the cycle of economic expansion goes.
I don’t believe the Celtic Board are stupid enough to need a lesson in economics from me, but their recent actions don’t help to disprove that theory.
A friend of mine from those days in Osaka once said, rather philosophically, and once we were both about 4 or 5 beers into our night out: “Don’t put down to malice, what you can more easily put down to incompetence.”
I find myself at that inflection point with the Celtic board now. Are we dealing with people who really are this clueless about modern football business practices?
Or is it the more sinister answer: they simply don’t care because fans will keep buying everything, they throw at them regardless?
I don’t want to believe it’s the former, but also accepting the latter is, frankly, deeply disturbing.
This could all be fixed in a matter of days. Get the players that manager has already identified and told the board he wants. Pay whatever we have to. It need not even become a matter of public discussion. That’s what “undisclosed fees” are for.
Next, get the manager tied down on a longer deal. Give him the tools to do the job for the long-term, and then, I think we could also expect him to commit to that same long-term vision.
But this is perhaps Celtic’s biggest over-riding problem. Short-termism. Nothing about the current running of the club seems to show any vision for the future.
When Fergus McCann came in more than 30 years ago, he had a plan. A new stadium, renewed stability in the boardroom, modernization and, eventually success on the park.
It took 4 years, and quite a bit of pain on the park, but Celtic eventually took back our Championship and reestablished ourselves as the dominant power in Scottish football.
It took 4 years, but the fans bought into it, because the plan was clear, well-communicated and laser-focused.
I think you’d have a hard time getting this current board to plan 4 days ahead, let alone 4 years.
Our rivals, whether we want to admit it or not, now have a boardroom focused on growth, expansion and, ultimately challenging us. They have people in place whose exact motives remain unknown, but who certainly know how to run a business at maximum efficiency.
That’s not just about balance sheets. That’s customer satisfaction, having a vision for ALL stakeholders to buy into, and most of all, good communication.
Rangers still trail us on the park by quite some distance, but unless our board get their act together that could all change very quickly. Off the park, they are pulling ahead of us, while we stand still.
We need to back the manager, and we need to back him now.
