James Forrest
The Emperor of Ice Cream
The other day, Boycie wrote an excellent piece for the site about Brendan Rodgers. His argument was simple enough: if Rodgers ever wanted to speak publicly about what happened behind the scenes at Celtic, this would be the perfect time to do it.
The damage he could do to the people running this club would be monumental if he decided to tell the full story.
Today we found out that he is due to appear with ACSOM in June next year; that will be a queue around the block event and no mistake. It does not feel as if there will be secrets divulged though. I think Rodgers is preparing something and that feels like a bookend event, probably in the final stages of whatever he is up to.
I did not think Brendan Rodgers would ever tell the story of what happened in his final few weeks and months at the club; maybe he will and maybe he won’t. But I am convinced that he does not need to.
Whatever happened behind the scenes in those closing stages was probably pretty momentous. I believe Rodgers has already hurt some of the people at Celtic Park more grievously than anything he could say now ever would.
Think for a moment about what happened in the immediate aftermath of his resignation. Do you really believe the board wanted to be seen as responsible for a second early Rodgers departure from this club? Someone smeared Rodgers to the media. I know that was taken seriously inside Celtic, but the person involved was sufficiently large and powerful that nobody dared challenge it publicly or name that person outright.
Rodgers called that person a coward. That is exactly what that person is.
But I also know the Celtic board never expected Rodgers to leave. They did not want Rodgers to leave. They wanted Rodgers to stay and fail. That would have been their victory. They wanted him to remain in place, absorb the consequences of their failures, carry the blame and eventually be left standing there as the man supporters held responsible for the decline. Instead, Rodgers presented them with the worst possible outcome.
He walked. He took away the ending they wanted to write for him and left them to pick up the pieces themselves. That’s why Desmond erupted.
And what Dermot Desmond did next created an entirely different kind of problem.
The statement published on Celtic’s official website was extraordinary. Rodgers could at least have explored legal action against the club, against Desmond personally, or both. I do not know whether he did. I do not know whether he threatened to.
I do not know whether any private settlement was reached, but I have always wondered.
Here’s the truth; we’ll never know. If he had served a writ no-one would ever have told us about it. Why would they? There would have been a nice out of court settlement, all parties would have said their goodbyes and the case would have been closed.
Had it gone to court, the risks for Celtic would have been enormous. Any dispute serious enough to get there would have dragged all sorts of internal material into the open: emails, meetings, briefings, who said what, who knew what, who authorised what and who was responsible for what happened between Rodgers and the people above him.
That would have been a monumental disaster for a lot of people at Celtic, and Desmond not the least amongst them.
Nobody wanted that, and in behaving as he did towards Rodgers, Desmond handed him the leverage to threaten a Year Zero scenario. He probably regretted it almost at the very second that he did it, and he would certainly have regretted it shortly thereafter. It was absolutely mad.
The point is that Rodgers does not need to tell us. His silence up until now is enough, because Celtic are telling the story for him.
Rodgers is not even drawing attention to the failings of this club anymore. He’s over in Saudi earning a fortune.
The club is drawing the heat all by itself.
All Rodgers has to do is sit back and watch, until he’s ready, until all the pieces on his side of the board are lined up and in the meantime the verdict of history is increasingly being delivered on the people who remained behind rather than the man who walked away.
Look at the state Celtic have descended into since his departure. The club has lurched from one managerial decision to another. Martin O’Neill came in. Wilfried Nancy came and went. O’Neill returned.
The club then went back to him again rather than emerging from the summer with some grand, coherent new football plan.
The transfer window was another absolute shit show. The coaching staff now appear divided over aspects of how the team should play. The midfield remains inadequate. The club failed to address obvious weaknesses. The managerial situation has been chaotic.
Another Champions League exit inevitably followed.
Where is the plan? Where is the strategy? Where is the evidence that anybody learned anything from what happened with Rodgers?
This is the part which matters. Rodgers complained about being undermined. He complained about his best efforts being frustrated by people inside the club. He complained about the conditions in which he was being asked to work.
Those people are still there.
And now Martin O’Neill is making many of the same complaints.
We know O’Neill has publicly acknowledged that the transfer window did not deliver everything he wanted, particularly in relation to the midfield and the number six position. Graham Spiers has also written about O’Neill’s private frustrations.
The problems Rodgers identified did not leave the building when Rodgers did. They remained. That is the real vindication he enjoys. Not some future autobiography. Not some explosive television interview. Not Rodgers sitting down one day and naming every person he believes was responsible.
The club itself has done more to prove his point than he ever could.
The board’s judgement is now openly questionable because of the sequence of decisions it has made. Managers have come and gone. Plans have changed. Recruitment has failed to solve obvious problems. The football department looks reactive rather than strategic.
There are stories, rumours and claims about other managerial candidates Celtic considered or approached. I know some of the names they were looking at. In at least one case, I understand negotiations never got properly moving because Celtic’s approach was regarded as contemptible.
There was another situation where talks broke down before anything could really be firmed up because Celtic’s handling of the process was so lacking in coherence; the guy wasn’t even sure what job he was actually being offered. Ponder that a while.
There have also been repeated reports around Robbie Keane and whether senior figures inside Celtic ultimately prevented that move from progressing.
Some of that is public. Some of it is information I have been told. But the precise details almost do not matter anymore. The pattern does.
It is the pattern of a club making things up as it goes along. No long-term strategy. No settled football structure. No obvious succession planning. No sense that the people making these decisions are operating from a coherent blueprint.
And Brendan Rodgers is sitting elsewhere now, earning a fortune and watching all of this unfold. Do you think he has regrets? I am sure he regrets the manner in which it ended. I am sure he regrets the fact that some supporters believe he let Celtic down again. But this was not the same as the first time.
A lot of us fought his corner right to the end. A lot of us still do.
But frankly, we barely have to anymore. The club’s own actions do it for us. The mess they have created speaks for itself. The state of the team speaks for itself. The managerial chaos speaks for itself. The recruitment failures speak for themselves.
Every time Celtic repeat one of the failures Rodgers complained about, his case becomes stronger without him saying a word.
That is why Boycie was right that Rodgers could do enormous damage if he ever decided to speak. It is why tickets for that ACSOM event will go fast, although I expect Rodgers will already have said something by the time it takes place.
But I think the more interesting truth is that he does not need to.
The damage has already been done.
History is written by the winners, they say. Well, this board has lost control of the narrative, and they are never getting it back.
Brendan Rodgers may never write the great autobiography in which he points the finger at the guilty men inside Celtic Park and elsewhere.
He may never tell us exactly what happened behind closed doors. He may never name names. But there are plenty of us writing the history of this period now. We know what happened in front of us. We know what Rodgers warned about. And we can see what happened after he left.
No NDA can silence that.
Rodgers does not have to tell his story. Celtic are telling it for him.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
The post Brendan sharpens his knives even as the board digs its own grave. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
Continue reading...
The damage he could do to the people running this club would be monumental if he decided to tell the full story.
Today we found out that he is due to appear with ACSOM in June next year; that will be a queue around the block event and no mistake. It does not feel as if there will be secrets divulged though. I think Rodgers is preparing something and that feels like a bookend event, probably in the final stages of whatever he is up to.
I did not think Brendan Rodgers would ever tell the story of what happened in his final few weeks and months at the club; maybe he will and maybe he won’t. But I am convinced that he does not need to.
Whatever happened behind the scenes in those closing stages was probably pretty momentous. I believe Rodgers has already hurt some of the people at Celtic Park more grievously than anything he could say now ever would.
Think for a moment about what happened in the immediate aftermath of his resignation. Do you really believe the board wanted to be seen as responsible for a second early Rodgers departure from this club? Someone smeared Rodgers to the media. I know that was taken seriously inside Celtic, but the person involved was sufficiently large and powerful that nobody dared challenge it publicly or name that person outright.
Rodgers called that person a coward. That is exactly what that person is.
But I also know the Celtic board never expected Rodgers to leave. They did not want Rodgers to leave. They wanted Rodgers to stay and fail. That would have been their victory. They wanted him to remain in place, absorb the consequences of their failures, carry the blame and eventually be left standing there as the man supporters held responsible for the decline. Instead, Rodgers presented them with the worst possible outcome.
He walked. He took away the ending they wanted to write for him and left them to pick up the pieces themselves. That’s why Desmond erupted.
And what Dermot Desmond did next created an entirely different kind of problem.
The statement published on Celtic’s official website was extraordinary. Rodgers could at least have explored legal action against the club, against Desmond personally, or both. I do not know whether he did. I do not know whether he threatened to.
I do not know whether any private settlement was reached, but I have always wondered.
Here’s the truth; we’ll never know. If he had served a writ no-one would ever have told us about it. Why would they? There would have been a nice out of court settlement, all parties would have said their goodbyes and the case would have been closed.
Had it gone to court, the risks for Celtic would have been enormous. Any dispute serious enough to get there would have dragged all sorts of internal material into the open: emails, meetings, briefings, who said what, who knew what, who authorised what and who was responsible for what happened between Rodgers and the people above him.
That would have been a monumental disaster for a lot of people at Celtic, and Desmond not the least amongst them.
Nobody wanted that, and in behaving as he did towards Rodgers, Desmond handed him the leverage to threaten a Year Zero scenario. He probably regretted it almost at the very second that he did it, and he would certainly have regretted it shortly thereafter. It was absolutely mad.
The point is that Rodgers does not need to tell us. His silence up until now is enough, because Celtic are telling the story for him.
Rodgers is not even drawing attention to the failings of this club anymore. He’s over in Saudi earning a fortune.
The club is drawing the heat all by itself.
All Rodgers has to do is sit back and watch, until he’s ready, until all the pieces on his side of the board are lined up and in the meantime the verdict of history is increasingly being delivered on the people who remained behind rather than the man who walked away.
Look at the state Celtic have descended into since his departure. The club has lurched from one managerial decision to another. Martin O’Neill came in. Wilfried Nancy came and went. O’Neill returned.
The club then went back to him again rather than emerging from the summer with some grand, coherent new football plan.
The transfer window was another absolute shit show. The coaching staff now appear divided over aspects of how the team should play. The midfield remains inadequate. The club failed to address obvious weaknesses. The managerial situation has been chaotic.
Another Champions League exit inevitably followed.
Where is the plan? Where is the strategy? Where is the evidence that anybody learned anything from what happened with Rodgers?
This is the part which matters. Rodgers complained about being undermined. He complained about his best efforts being frustrated by people inside the club. He complained about the conditions in which he was being asked to work.
Those people are still there.
And now Martin O’Neill is making many of the same complaints.
We know O’Neill has publicly acknowledged that the transfer window did not deliver everything he wanted, particularly in relation to the midfield and the number six position. Graham Spiers has also written about O’Neill’s private frustrations.
The problems Rodgers identified did not leave the building when Rodgers did. They remained. That is the real vindication he enjoys. Not some future autobiography. Not some explosive television interview. Not Rodgers sitting down one day and naming every person he believes was responsible.
The club itself has done more to prove his point than he ever could.
The board’s judgement is now openly questionable because of the sequence of decisions it has made. Managers have come and gone. Plans have changed. Recruitment has failed to solve obvious problems. The football department looks reactive rather than strategic.
There are stories, rumours and claims about other managerial candidates Celtic considered or approached. I know some of the names they were looking at. In at least one case, I understand negotiations never got properly moving because Celtic’s approach was regarded as contemptible.
There was another situation where talks broke down before anything could really be firmed up because Celtic’s handling of the process was so lacking in coherence; the guy wasn’t even sure what job he was actually being offered. Ponder that a while.
There have also been repeated reports around Robbie Keane and whether senior figures inside Celtic ultimately prevented that move from progressing.
Some of that is public. Some of it is information I have been told. But the precise details almost do not matter anymore. The pattern does.
It is the pattern of a club making things up as it goes along. No long-term strategy. No settled football structure. No obvious succession planning. No sense that the people making these decisions are operating from a coherent blueprint.
And Brendan Rodgers is sitting elsewhere now, earning a fortune and watching all of this unfold. Do you think he has regrets? I am sure he regrets the manner in which it ended. I am sure he regrets the fact that some supporters believe he let Celtic down again. But this was not the same as the first time.
A lot of us fought his corner right to the end. A lot of us still do.
But frankly, we barely have to anymore. The club’s own actions do it for us. The mess they have created speaks for itself. The state of the team speaks for itself. The managerial chaos speaks for itself. The recruitment failures speak for themselves.
Every time Celtic repeat one of the failures Rodgers complained about, his case becomes stronger without him saying a word.
That is why Boycie was right that Rodgers could do enormous damage if he ever decided to speak. It is why tickets for that ACSOM event will go fast, although I expect Rodgers will already have said something by the time it takes place.
But I think the more interesting truth is that he does not need to.
The damage has already been done.
History is written by the winners, they say. Well, this board has lost control of the narrative, and they are never getting it back.
Brendan Rodgers may never write the great autobiography in which he points the finger at the guilty men inside Celtic Park and elsewhere.
He may never tell us exactly what happened behind closed doors. He may never name names. But there are plenty of us writing the history of this period now. We know what happened in front of us. We know what Rodgers warned about. And we can see what happened after he left.
No NDA can silence that.
Rodgers does not have to tell his story. Celtic are telling it for him.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
The post Brendan sharpens his knives even as the board digs its own grave. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
Continue reading...
