No one in the Lennoxtown media room had even mentioned in 32 minutes
11:34, 13 Sep 2025Updated 11:43, 13 Sep 2025
Brendan Rodgers
‘By the way, Kilmarnock play 5-4-1, sometimes 5-3-2…’
Brendan Rodgers’ parting words on Friday after one of the most incredible press conferences in recent memory were every bit as pitch perfect as the 4000 or so that came before.
No one in the Lennoxtown media room had even mentioned Kilmarnock in 32 minutes where the Celtic manager held court and didn’t miss a single target.
Sunday’s game is huge – but in the circumstances it was a sideshow. And Rodgers knew it.
He also knew by then he’d delivered a kind of media masterclass that should be shown on SFA coaching courses down at Inverclyde for the next 20 years.
Seriously, a few of us long term Rodgers observers have witnessed some crackers over the years, but this one was on another level.
If the Irishman’s old pal Jose Mourinho had been sitting in the back row, he would have been grinning in appreciation.
If the battle lines have been drawn between the Celtic fans and the board, Rodgers has planted his on a giant hill somewhere in between – and Hoops fans won’t need any convincing to climb up to join him.
He could have been sitting in a loin cloth and telling everyone he was Spartacus.
Celtic fans reckon some AI app helped do up that wild club statement last week. There was nothing artificial about the intelligence on show on Friday afternoon.
It was genius. And it’s dragged Celtic as a club into very deep waters, where they have to choose between letting the manager steer the ship completely or sinking under a tidal wave of fan fury.
There was so much to unpack. Rodgers dismantled the ChatGPT statement bit by bit, admitting the transfer window was a total failure, changes needed to be made in strategy, talking about the club’s huge potential if the leadership would just step up and grab it.
Tying it in to his own future was another piece of 4D chess.
Rodgers actually said he actually wants to remain Celtic manager – with the caveat being as long as the club will match his vision.
It’s a heck of a caveat given the last few transfer windows.
But what a challenge that is to lay down to the Celtic board. The most successful manager in the club’s history since Jock Stein wants to stick around for the long term and build something special.
If they let him sail off into the sunset at the end of the season the fans will never forgive them.
And by branding whoever turned him over in a briefing with a national paper a coward who should resign, he clearly has seen an opportunity to get a head on a plate of someone who he believes is standing in his way.
Rodgers stopped short of naming names, but perhaps he didn’t have too. By not naming some names when it came to his good guys list, he left it wide open for the Miss Marples among the fans to join the dots.
Most already have.
And it’s left Rodgers not just holding all of the cards. He’s clutching all the chips and he’s got the croupier’s bowtie in his back pocket to boot.
This is a manager with 800 plus games under his belt, he might be just 52-years-old but he’s too long in the tooth to be putting up with any nonsense.
This was a back me or sack me job, where the latter option would cause an already fuming fan base to go thermonuclear.
So where does that leave Celtic’s leadership? Pretty much snookered.
There’s every chance Rodgers was being crafty and he’s managed to now seal a clean break at the end of term that will leave his reputation intact and his status among fans well and truly restored, even though it would leave a bomb site behind him.
But what if Option A can work? It might be calling a bluff of just going with the flow, but chuck Rodgers the keys to the castle.
Appoint some serious experienced football operators in the boardroom who know how to nail down a deal, grow a set in the transfer market and let the manager stand and fall on his own terms.
Brendan Rodgers of Celtic(Image: (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images))
Celtic are about to announce record new financial figures – with talk in the background of £100m in the bank – so this would be the time to do it.
It also might be the only way to win back the swathes of fans who are demanding change.
Either way, with Rodgers in free-wheeling form, the next few weeks and months are going to be box office.