WILL BRENDAN RODGERS STAY OR GO? WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR…
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
Celtic have been surprisingly active in the transfer market so far this summer, considering we don’t have our Champions League Play-Off tie until mid-August.
However, with each new signing, the same repetitive question keeps coming up?
Is the manager going to sign a new deal or not?
Concern as Summer Recruits “Don’t Seem Like Brendan Rodgers Signings”
There have been two main criticisms levelled at Celtic’s transfer strategy so far this season. One, is the seemingly large number of “project” players, or squad players who won’t really be expected to challenge for a starting place.
Callum Osmand and Hayato Inamura come under the former, with returning goalkeeper Ross Doohan being firmly in the latter category.
Such signings are important, both for squad continuity and future team development.
However, they aren’t the kind that get fans excited. They also don’t, at face value, appear to fit the profile of the kinds of players Brendan Rodgers himself said he wanted to bring in to “freshen up the squad” at the end of last season.
A common refrain among Celtic fans over the past month or so has been “I don’t think that’s a Rodgers signing”.
Indeed some have cynically suggested that the likes of Inamura were signed less with the idea of improving Celtic on the park, and more with improving our marketing potential in Japan.
I don’t buy into this idea at all, simply because nothing Celtic’s commercial department has done in Japan in the nearly 2 decades I have been living here gives me any confidence whatsoever that they would be that forward thinking.
Players like Osmand and Inamura are clearly being signed with a view to them playing in the first team eventually, but probably at a time after next summer, which is when Brendan Rodgers’ current contract expires.
Now, Rodgers has insisted he is going nowhere this summer, and he remains committed to Celtic. I don’t doubt that. I think he has learned the hard way just how venomous some of the Celtic support can be when you aren't straight with them.
However, the lack of any firm decision either way about what happens next summer will, if it is allowed to continue much longer, have a destabilizing effect on the team, the fans, indeed the whole club.
Celtic’s biggest strength, our ability to come together in times of adversity and support the team and the players is also something of an Achilles heel. It also means that we can become quite fractious and unsettled when we don’t all share the same clear vision.
Right now, the profile of players coming in points to them being part of a wider recruitment strategy that doesn't have the current manager's primary interests at heart. That is a worrying sign.
However, it is not necessarily a sign that the manager is against staying on beyond his current deal. Celtic need to have some semblance of future proofing regardless of whether Brendan Rodgers stays or goes next summer.
I think who we sign, and perhaps more importantly who we sell, between now and the European play-offs will give a greater indication as to whether the manager and the board are on the same page.
And that, in turn, will give us our clearest indicator yet as to Brendan Rodgers’ future intentions.
