BRENDAN RODGERS has taken Leicester City to second on the English Premier League and remarkably all he wants to do is talk about his time at Celtic. Meanwhile the Celtic support have spent the past week or so reflecting on the home and away wins Neil Lennon achieved over Lazio in the Europa League, the latter being Celtic’s first ever competitive win on Italian soil, and understanding that those wins would simply not have happened with Rodgers in charge.
For all his domestic dominance his record in Europe was shocking and some of the results were frankly humiliating. And this morning he’s been speaking to Daily Record, understanding as ever the heartbeat of the Celtic support with that one.
Here’s some of the self justification stuff he’s been going on about as he clearly thinks we’re all sitting in awe of his achievements at Leicester rather than Lenny’s at Celtic. For Brendan it is as it always was, all about Brendan.
As an aside Celtic sold literally lorry loads of his autobiography. Did you get a copy? Did you read it? Perhaps you were expecting an insight into the Invincible season from the manager’s point of view? It was a biography so was obviously going to cover other things in his life, childhood and his Road to Paradise, but also, you’d expect, a little bit more on what happened when he got there, to manager that club he’s always supported.
At the time reading that book worried me. It just didn’t seem to be writing enough about Celtic, it was all about Brendan. Later when he left those worries came back to me – like that M&Ms advert when the chocolate says ‘Now the biting makes sense!’
“I’ve said it many times, it was incredibly difficult,” Rodgers started his interview with Daily Record’s Keith Jackson.
“It was a really tough call from a personal perspective and a professional one because my relationship with everyone at the club was great form the boardroom to the dressing room.
“But perhaps now people will have a better understanding of why I made the choice to go when I did.”
Leicester are ahead of the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal and Tottenham but Liverpool are going out of sight at the top of the table having beaten City on Sunday, if you are interested. Brendan appears to expect that we’ll be as excited as him that he’s second in the league and his side beat Arsenal at the weekend.
He continued to talk about BR-Exit – back in February when he sneaked off under the cover of darkness, heading for the East Midlands, and taking most of Celtic’s backroom staff with him, with the honourable exception of John Kennedy, who is now a target for Hibs for their vacancy. Kennedy turned down Leicester to stay at Celtic and he’s going to go to Easter Road? Yeah right. Back to Brendan talking about his favourite subject, himself.
“I had a lot think about at the time. The players were absolutely phenomenal for me in my time there. We were on this great journey together. We created a culture which I loved coming into every day. And we were winners.
“We won – we were relentless at it and relentless in our work – and we had success together.
“So for me to then make the decision to leave them behind was not an easy thing to do. But I felt I had taken it as far as I could in that time. I then had a decision to make about going into a new project at Leicester where there is an ambition there and there are challenges that I would be excited by.
“We were 27 games into a league campaign. We were clear at the top of the league, we had already won a cup and I felt I was leaving the club in a good state,” the former Celtic manager said.
The other way to look at it is that you put yourself before the club, the players and staff (the ones you weren’t poaching) and the support and left Celtic in the lurch ahead of a crucial league and cup double header at the two Edinburgh grounds where you had lost on your previous visits.
“OK, the timing wasn’t ideal for many people but I felt the club was in a really good place, the players’ mentality, everything around the club was healthy.
“But, because of how quickly it happened, it was probably difficult for some people to accept. But we’ve both moved on since then. Celtic moved on and won the treble which was brilliant. Three trebles consecutively which is incredible.
“And I was able to come into Leicester and assess players while they were under pressure because that’s when you can really make judgements. I felt it would give me those last 10 or 11 games of the season to assess what Leicester had and what needed to be done.
“It gave me the time to prepare for the summer so that we were ready to make a challenge at the start of this season. I think it’s worked out well for both parties.”
It’s at this point that Brendan fully expects the online Celtic support to stop what they are doing and burst into a spontaneous round of applause for Brendan who selfless decision to go to Leicester in February allowed us to win another Treble. Then he’s off talking about Celtic again.
“Listen, when you leave Celtic in terms of history, club and support base there are not many bigger in the world. I know that. But then there is the professional challenge of doing something at a different club.
“Of course, Leicester is not as a big a club as Celtic. But the challenge here is trying to break into the elite down here. That’s the big challenge.
“When I went to Celtic they had just lost a Scottish Cup semi final to Rangers who were coming up into the Premiership. The challenge for me was, could we then win and win in a better way and obviously get the supporters back on side. That was the challenge that attracted me.
“So at Leicester the challenge was different. They had finished 9th in the table the season before but they had ambitions to try to challenge. They had spent £100m on a new training ground and assembled a good squad of young players with the potential to improve. I felt that was a really good challenge to take on.”
You’ll notice that there’s been no mention at all on Neil Lennon beating Lazio home and away. Brendan’s European nights are best forgotten about, even he can’t find anything positive to say about them.
Brendan it appears, wants us to still love him as much as he loves himself. Like his European adventures, that’s a Mission Impossible.
