James Forrest
The Emperor of Ice Cream
There will be plenty more to come out of today’s press conference, but I want to get an early piece up on Brendan Rodgers’ comments about the anonymous briefing against him in the Sun last Saturday morning.
We all know the story. An unnamed “club insider” told someone, who told the press, that folk inside Celtic weren’t happy with Rodgers or with his conduct and accused him of trying to “engineer his exit.”
The club has had a full week to distance itself from those remarks and hasn’t done so. We knew Rodgers would be asked about it today, and sure enough, he was.
His answers were plain.
He said he found it “interesting” when he saw it. Asked how he felt, he called it “cowardly.” Asked if he was surprised, he said he wasn’t — because he was briefed against the last time he was here, briefed against when he left, briefed against when he returned, and he’s being briefed against now. He clearly accepts it as part of life at Celtic.
Pressed on whether he knew who had done it, he said no.
That may be the only part where he gilded the lily a little, because I’m sure he has a fair idea who the responsible parties are. But there’s no value in him naming names publicly, and indeed there’s no need: a lot of us have already drawn our own conclusions based on prior events and the evidence at hand.
Rodgers is absolutely right to call it cowardly.
I used the same word myself this morning. It puts him in a bad position, it makes life uncomfortable for the rest of us, but he has made it clear that nothing has changed: he knows he has enemies inside the walls. That is damning in itself. What sort of operation is Celtic running if senior figures feel free to brief against the manager, while he’s still in the job, rather than keeping disagreements in-house?
He was asked directly if the club should conduct an investigation into the source of the briefing. His response was as cutting as it was revealing:
“I don’t think there’s any doubt. If you are sitting where I am with the weight I have on my shoulders, it’s so important to feel supported. Whoever is briefing, they can come here and speak to me at any time. We all will have frustrations at times in our life, but I would never think of going and bringing that to the fore to hurt someone else. Especially someone who didn’t have to come back but wanted to come back.”
This is extraordinary. It is as close to an open rebuke of the club’s internal culture as you’ll ever hear from a Celtic manager in public.
He is calling for an investigation — effectively demanding that the club root out the coward within — and at the same time reminding everyone that he didn’t have to come back here. He chose to. That should have been met with support and respect.
Instead, he’s had betrayal.
The smear itself was ludicrous: that Rodgers was trying to engineer his exit. A preposterous suggestion when you consider how many times he has pledged to be here until the end of the campaign — something he doubled down on again today, with not the slightest hint of doubt. He even referenced his last departure, when the board’s refusal to back him properly in the transfer market forced his hand.
“Last time, it caused me to leave,” he said. “This time I’m not doing that.” The message could not be clearer: the briefing was not only gutless but the central claim was a barefaced lie, as every one of us already knew.
None of this casts anyone in Celtic’s upper executive in a good light. If those people really do harbour doubts about Rodgers, and if they had any guts, they would fire him outright and provoke an even greater confrontation with the supporters.
But they won’t, because — as Rodgers himself has pointed out — they are cowards. They hide behind the man they’ve stabbed in the back. It is disgusting. He has called them out, and in doing so he has exposed them as liars as well.
And the implications are enormous.
Rodgers has demanded accountability inside the walls. That is not something you can ignore, not if you care about the health of the institution.
How anyone can still support this board is beyond me.
The no-confidence motions have stripped them of a mandate, but their legitimacy was gone long before. The moment they decided to deprive the manager of funds, they forfeited it. In choosing to attack him through a hated tabloid rag, they trashed themselves more than they could ever have trashed him. They have stained their reputations for all time, and today he called them exactly what they are.
And as fans, it is our job to hold them to account for what they’ve done. On Sunday at Kilmarnock, that process will begin.
The post Celtic boss “not surprised” by “cowardly” briefing and calls for a club investigation. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
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We all know the story. An unnamed “club insider” told someone, who told the press, that folk inside Celtic weren’t happy with Rodgers or with his conduct and accused him of trying to “engineer his exit.”
The club has had a full week to distance itself from those remarks and hasn’t done so. We knew Rodgers would be asked about it today, and sure enough, he was.
His answers were plain.
He said he found it “interesting” when he saw it. Asked how he felt, he called it “cowardly.” Asked if he was surprised, he said he wasn’t — because he was briefed against the last time he was here, briefed against when he left, briefed against when he returned, and he’s being briefed against now. He clearly accepts it as part of life at Celtic.
Pressed on whether he knew who had done it, he said no.
That may be the only part where he gilded the lily a little, because I’m sure he has a fair idea who the responsible parties are. But there’s no value in him naming names publicly, and indeed there’s no need: a lot of us have already drawn our own conclusions based on prior events and the evidence at hand.
Rodgers is absolutely right to call it cowardly.
I used the same word myself this morning. It puts him in a bad position, it makes life uncomfortable for the rest of us, but he has made it clear that nothing has changed: he knows he has enemies inside the walls. That is damning in itself. What sort of operation is Celtic running if senior figures feel free to brief against the manager, while he’s still in the job, rather than keeping disagreements in-house?
He was asked directly if the club should conduct an investigation into the source of the briefing. His response was as cutting as it was revealing:
“I don’t think there’s any doubt. If you are sitting where I am with the weight I have on my shoulders, it’s so important to feel supported. Whoever is briefing, they can come here and speak to me at any time. We all will have frustrations at times in our life, but I would never think of going and bringing that to the fore to hurt someone else. Especially someone who didn’t have to come back but wanted to come back.”
This is extraordinary. It is as close to an open rebuke of the club’s internal culture as you’ll ever hear from a Celtic manager in public.
He is calling for an investigation — effectively demanding that the club root out the coward within — and at the same time reminding everyone that he didn’t have to come back here. He chose to. That should have been met with support and respect.
Instead, he’s had betrayal.
The smear itself was ludicrous: that Rodgers was trying to engineer his exit. A preposterous suggestion when you consider how many times he has pledged to be here until the end of the campaign — something he doubled down on again today, with not the slightest hint of doubt. He even referenced his last departure, when the board’s refusal to back him properly in the transfer market forced his hand.
“Last time, it caused me to leave,” he said. “This time I’m not doing that.” The message could not be clearer: the briefing was not only gutless but the central claim was a barefaced lie, as every one of us already knew.
None of this casts anyone in Celtic’s upper executive in a good light. If those people really do harbour doubts about Rodgers, and if they had any guts, they would fire him outright and provoke an even greater confrontation with the supporters.
But they won’t, because — as Rodgers himself has pointed out — they are cowards. They hide behind the man they’ve stabbed in the back. It is disgusting. He has called them out, and in doing so he has exposed them as liars as well.
And the implications are enormous.
Rodgers has demanded accountability inside the walls. That is not something you can ignore, not if you care about the health of the institution.
How anyone can still support this board is beyond me.
The no-confidence motions have stripped them of a mandate, but their legitimacy was gone long before. The moment they decided to deprive the manager of funds, they forfeited it. In choosing to attack him through a hated tabloid rag, they trashed themselves more than they could ever have trashed him. They have stained their reputations for all time, and today he called them exactly what they are.
And as fans, it is our job to hold them to account for what they’ve done. On Sunday at Kilmarnock, that process will begin.
The post Celtic boss “not surprised” by “cowardly” briefing and calls for a club investigation. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
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