Copyright dailyrecord
There was a rumour this week suggesting Brendan Rodgers might be at Hampden this afternoon. I would hope that’s incorrect. Brendan’s appearance would only be regarded as provocative and damage the fact that, from my perspective, he has the moral high ground in the aftermath of his resignation from Celtic . The man won 11 out of the 13 trophies he contested at the club and, while there were mistakes along the way that were his fault, Rodgers did not deserve the brutal statement released by Dermot Desmond late last Monday night. As children we were taught that if you couldn’t think of something good to say about someone then you should say nothing at all. Desmond’s statement read like someone who couldn’t think of something bad enough to say about someone, so he tried harder until the words came to him. It was, in my opinion, as crass as it was classless and Celtic should have been better than that, particularly when it came from the man who is, to all intents and purposes, the club’s owner. Except, of course, he isn’t. But that’s a peculiarity of the way Celtic are run. It wasn’t until I watched Hearts’ benefactor Tony Bloom cavorting about the Tynecastle directors box after the win over Celtic last Sunday that it dawned on me. Celtic’s main problem, apart from having poorer players than they once had, is that, as a club, they’re out of date. The world has passed them by in terms of how they run their business affairs and they are blissfully ignorant of the fact. Bloom’s an old-fashioned ego-maniac, milking the crowd for all he’s worth and posing for selfies, but he has his finger on the pulse and the evidence of his success is the league table created with the help of Jamestown Analytics. Tony is a technocrat. Celtic are in the hands of an autocrat, Desmond. A man who conducts Celtic’s affairs while aided and abetted by a non-verbal chairman and chief executive as protest grows and progress stalls. Events last week painted an unattractive picture of what goes on behind the scenes. Detoxifying a club’s poisonous atmosphere by using character assassination to destroy Rodgers’ personal and professional reputation seems an odd way to go about your business. Then again, the way Celtic have done business since the start of this season has been mystifying for the disenfranchised fans. Which explains why thousands were outside the front door on Wednesday night denouncing the occupants of the boardroom. The club’s shareholders can have their say at Celtic’s annual general meeting on November 21 but Desmond has a long record of non-attendance at that gathering. The organ grinder tends to leave it to the monkeys so we must wait and see if he cares to share his thoughts with the world at large. Mind you, he was at a midweek game against Falkirk, which is a rare occurrence. Unheard of even. I suppose if you have called the outgoing manager “divisive and self-serving” you have to show up as a member of the Inclusive and Self-Aware movement. So how come someone who is the principal, but not the majority shareholder, has the capacity to remove Rodgers then phone Martin O’Neill to come up to Glasgow and hold the fort without apparently any prior consultation with anybody on the board? On that basis, will it be Desmond’s fault if anything goes wrong against Rangers this afternoon in the Premier Sports Cup semi-final at Hampden? From a purely football perspective, the most worrying aspect of Rodgers leaving Celtic is that he appears to have taken a look at a seriously-flawed squad of players and legged it in the belief that they could not be turned round before the destruction of his image as a serial winner. O’Neill’s carefully cultivated brand of folksy humour has the appearance of being a deflection tactic designed to keep the masses at bay until the cavalry gets here. And the old fellow came off the starting grid like an Aston Martin while running over Falkirk. But O’Neill knows from experience there is no deflection tactic known to man that adequately covers the loss of an Old Firm tie. You take contempt, acrimony and loathing, all of which afflict Celtic in the dispute with outraged fans, and multiply it many times over in the event of the team across the road on the other side of the city winning bragging rights. When Martin won his first derby by a 6-2 margin 25 years ago, he had the likes of Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton and Stiliyan Petrov in his team. When Martin’s assistant, Shaun Maloney, made his Old Firm debut in a 3-0 win at Ibrox a year later, he replaced Lubo Moravcik and was on the pitch when Larsson scored his 50th goal of the season. Times have changed. Two weeks ago, when Celtic lost away to Dundee for the first time in 37 years and Brendan made his now infamous remark about Honda Civics and Ferraris, he explained the outburst by saying, “You have to be harsh to be clear.” In that vein, it is impossible, therefore, to underplay the outcome of today’s game. If Celtic lose, they may only have the Scottish Cup to play for this season. Do I make myself clear? Remember, O’Neill himself said on radio last Monday he believed Hearts could win the league title. Try taking that bleak picture into the job market and attracting a quality manager to your club. At boardroom level, Celtic have no goodwill in the bank. Only money they did not spend for the betterment of the team. A club that is out of date can no longer take a dictatorial approach to customer relations and pursue antiquated methods of player recruitment and pass it all off as a successful business model. I make the observation as someone who is a year older than Desmond and two years older than O’Neill – and septuagenarians appear to be all the rage at the moment.
