Brendan Rodgers met with various fan media outlets today at Celtic Park, and ACSOM was delighted to once again be part of the press conference.
Due to the nature of Rodgers’ departure back in 2019, we have been left to join up the dots of various interviews he conducted during his 7 in 7 tenure to try and establish the reasons behind his relationship breakdown with the club’s power-brokers last time round.
RECRUITMENT RED FLAGS
One of the glaring issues was recruitment, whereby Rodgers was determined to push the envelope on various signings whilst refusing to cash in on some of his players when they hit their peak values (Dedryck Boyata, Craig Gordon and Olivier Ntcham were subjects of transfer bids totalling £25m during Rodger’s first spell, but ultimately left without a single shekel dropping into the club’s account).
There were some obvious red flags back then: the signing of German international Marvin Compper, who played 83 minutes of football for the first-team despite costing a cool million quid; the infamous ‘terminado’ press conference where the board’s ambition was questioned in plain sight; and the arrival of Marian Shved being greeted with all the enthusiasm of a night-shift worker being roused from their slumber to accept a parcel delivery for a neighbour.
Rodgers didn’t even have time to get himself comfortable in his seat after individually shaking hands with every fan media representative, when he was asked to clarify this very matter.
“I needed to see the infrastructure… when Michael (Nicholson) and Chris (McKay) came out (to Majorca) and took me through where the club is at, and what they’ve done over the last few years, from a manager’s perspective, I was really impressed by that.”
TRANSFER CONFUSION
Having praised Celtic for improving how we conduct our transfer business, Brendan then went on to explain how the club’s approach to recruitment during his first spell, “was maybe a little confused,” before going on to confirm that he was previously being presented with certain players that weren’t at his desired level.
This rings true with information previously provided to ACSOM by one of the scouting team who described how Rodgers eventually refused to show any interest in pursuing many of the players presented to him during the club’s regular recruitment meetings. Matters had clearly come to the point of loggerheads between the manager and board, with Rodgers eventually checking out.
The fact that Rodgers has been given the recruitment assurances that he needed in order to return to the Parkhead hot-seat should be exciting for Celtic fans. “You need the clarity,” confirmed Rodgers, “It’s first-class from a manager’s perspective”.
Central midfielder, Odin Thiago Holm, has already arrived from Vålerenga to become the first signing during Rodgers’ second spell in charge. Although he appears to be a ‘legacy’ signing, identified by Mark Lawwell’s recruitment department prior to Rodgers’ return, the new gaffer has already given the Norwegian his seal of approval, which is more than can be said for some of the signings last time round.
PAUL JOHN DYKES
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