Hoops Review: Highly-rated English manager has indicated interest in Celtic Job amid Brendan Rodgers sacking

Hoops Review: Highly-rated English manager has indicated interest in Celtic Job amid Brendan Rodgers sacking

I’d be astonished if Brendan Rodgers was still Celtic’s manager at the start of the following season, regardless of whether he won the league title in May.

Brendan’s baiting created an uncomfortable listening and watching experience throughout the last week. Resentment, rejection, and retribution: the employer has had to deal with all of these negative reactions in a matter of days. During the public outcry over Rodgers’ verbal altercation with BBC reporter Jane Lewis on Sunday,

he must have wondered what happened to him at his Spanish home in June.

That day, he gave up his original plan to take a year off and accepted Dermot Desmond’s offer to return to Celtic Park. Brendan’s press conference on Tuesday, where he explained himself after the post-match interview with Lewis at Fir Park, was startlingly similar to his first as Celtic manager in July. I mentioned at the time that Rodgers seemed to be being interrogated with care. Tuesday’s questioning prior to the Dundee game was another example of interrogation disguised as an interview.

The night before, BBC Scotland’s prime-time news show The Nine requested the assistance of a linguistics professor to provide an academic viewpoint on someone saying “good girl” to a female television journalist. The professor determined that Rodgers’ words were “ill thought out” and that when misused, words were “as bad as violence”.

At that moment, the case of Lewis v. Rodgers required judicial review. A verbal slip-up by the manager? There is no argument.

Violence? Why push the conversation in that way at the expense of his character? Brendan has, of course, been the target of vitriolic abuse from certain Celtic fans. When he returned to Celtic in the summer, he was dubbed “Judas” and a “rat,” derogatory labels used to condemn him for leaving for Leicester in 2019.

Last weekend’s game at Motherwell demonstrated the degree of the bitterness that still exists. The booing that greeted his substitution of Tomoki Iwata highlighted the manager’s continuous estrangement from his internal critics.

Rodgers’ disappointment at last Tuesday’s news conference was motivated by a spiteful response of this kind. That meeting was attended by a female sportswriter, who had used her newspaper column that morning to insinuate Rodgers had “belittled” Lewis with his “good girl” remark. Okay, fair enough. That’s her opinion.

But she was in Lennoxtown to see if she could extend the story into the following day by interrogating management. What was the goal of doing that, if not to worsen the debate? Similarly, the BBC awarded Lewis to Celtic’s rout of Dundee on Wednesday night. Following the events of four days ago, the two may have been given a diplomatic break from one another.

Brendan is, of course, the highest-paid manager in Scottish football history, and money may assist to mitigate the effects of constantly dealing with abuse. However, the events of last week, from Celtic fans to the wider media, and even the hired gunman with a university background, must have prompted Rodgers to reflect.

You don’t stay anywhere you’re not wanted. We’ll have to wait and see, but the boss deserves a break today to indulge in some good old-fashioned paranoia. Conspiracy is typically reassuring to fans. It takes their focus away from the actual world.

Today, they can repeat the old rubbish about Hearts losing to Rangers despite their best efforts against the green and white hoops. This is of no consequence to Rodgers. His most difficult challenge is confronting the assumption that Celtic are clinging to the title pursuit by a thread.

It is entirely legitimate to critique Celtic’s results or their perplexing signing strategy. Always professional; never personal.

However, character assassination and criticism from his own supporters and those outside of football-related media are a different matter. Rodgers may mull it over while deciding whether his team has what it takes to beat the Rangers in the league.

What happened at Tynecastle will help answer this question. The inaccurate response will surely result in reprisal in accordance with the current uneasy climate.

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