Celtic’s manager and board at a crossroads, both must meet challenges in tandem

When Brendan Rodgers returned to Celtic Park in the summer of 2023, the reunion perhaps carried a familiar air of inevitability…

He was the serial winner coming home, the architect of an Invincible domestic treble, and the manager best placed to continue Celtic’s control of the Scottish Premiership after Ange Postecoglou’s departure.

With Brendan Rodgers now into his third season in charge, the league table still shows Celtic on course for another title challenge. Yet beneath the silverware lies a more complicated story.

Rodgers’ third season is not a simple tale of ‘back the manager, sack the board,’ nor is it a straightforward indictment of perceived boardroom frugality or lack of strategy. Instead, Celtic find themselves at a delicate intersection of evolving leadership, squad stagnation, and supporter unrest.

The protests against the Celtic board have been well documented, the sound of silence, banners unfurled in the stands, chants aimed at the directors’ box and calls for more ambition and organisation in transfer windows. But to frame this solely as board versus manager is to perhaps oversimplify the mood among some supporters.

Many fans who back the boardroom protests also harbour frustrations with Rodgers himself. His tactics, substitutions, and game management have all been questioned this season. It isn’t as binary as ‘support Rodgers, blame the board.’ There is a growing cohort of supporters who believe both can be true, that the board has failed to invest adequately and that Rodgers’ approach sometimes leaves points on the table.

Of course, Rodgers has not operated in a vacuum. Last season offered built-in explanations for any perceived drop in standards. After a February Champions League exit to Bayern Munich, Celtic were miles ahead in the league. The urgency, perhaps understandably, waned, the performances plateaued, and when the Scottish Cup final arrived in May the team looked flat.

Was that merely a natural hangover from a long domestic campaign, or the first sign of deeper issues, squad fatigue, lack of depth, or simply players bored of facing the same domestic opponents four to six times a season?

Those questions have carried over into this campaign. Some players were reportedly promised moves that never materialised, breeding frustration and unsettling the dressing room. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear a disrupted pre-season followed and that bled into the competitive action.

That, of course, came on the back of a summer recruitment window that many fans labelled a debacle. Celtic downsized when players and supporters alike believed Champions League last-16 qualification was a genuine target. Rodgers, for all his experience, has had to manage a squad whose internal expectations were undercut by boardroom caution.

Within this context, Rodgers’ tactics inevitably drew scrutiny. He remains faithful to his possession-based 4-3-3, with patient build-up, technical midfielders, wide wingers stretching the pitch, even in the absence of suitable options. It is a system that continues to dominate domestically, but is arguably creaking in that regard, and one, this season and for periods of the last campaign, that can feel predictable when opponents park the bus.

Supporters point to laboured draws and narrow wins this season as evidence that the manager is not refreshing the blueprint enough. There is certainly merit in some of those arguments.

So, is he missing a trick? Could a new tactical switch, whether a shift to a 3-4-3, a more aggressive pressing approach, or simply greater set-piece emphasis, inject freshness into a squad that occasionally appears to drift into autopilot?

Brendan Rodgers is known for evolution rather than revolution, but evolution can still feel like stasis when results tighten and entertainment dips.

At the same time, Rodgers’ role is not merely tactical. He is managing personalities, expectations, and the fallout from boardroom decisions. Keeping unhappy players focused after failed moves is as much a part of the job as picking the right formation. In that light, some of the team’s flat performances may be less about a stale playbook and more about a dressing room still processing a summer of frustration.

Domestically, Rodgers’ remit remains clear, win the league and add a cup where possible. With theRangers in transition and the rest of the league, bar this season’s challenge from Hearts, still chasing, that is achievable, though of course never guaranteed.

Europe is a different calculation. Celtic’s Europa League budget arguably makes a Champions League last-16 run an aspiration rather than an expectation. The Europa League perhaps offers a more realistic stage for progress, but even there Celtic remain outsiders.

This reality complicates the discourse. When a team wins the league but falls short in Europe, is that a failure of tactics, recruitment, or simply economics?

Supporters craving European nights of consequence understandably want more, but demanding sustained continental success without significant strategic investment is to ignore the self-imposed strategical gap Celtic as a club hand the manager, and perhaps even the financial gap Celtic face.

Rodgers 2.0 is neither a triumph nor a disaster, it arguably remains a work in progress, shaped by boardroom strategy, player psychology, and the natural limits of Scottish football’s ecosystem. The fanbase’s disquiet reflects that complexity.

Some blame the board for shrinking ambition. Others question the manager’s in-game flexibility. Many hold both views at once. It is not back Rodgers or sack the board. It is a recognition that success requires both a manager willing to adapt and a hierarchy willing to strategically invest.

For Rodgers, the challenge is to show that evolution can still excite, to find new tactical approaches, to demand sharper recruitment, and to re-energise a dressing room perhaps dulled by domestic routine.

For the board, the task is to match Celtic’s European ambitions with sufficient planning and resources to pursue them. Anything less, and Celtic risk remaining what they are today, domestically dominant, but perpetually one step short of the European stage supporters believe they belong on.

Celtic’s current crossroads is not a story with a single villain or a simple fix. Rodgers must prove that his methods can adapt and inspire, while the board must show the ambition to match the club’s aspirations beyond domestic dominance.

Until both sides meet those challenges in tandem, Celtic will remain a team capable of winning at home but still searching for the spark, and the strategy, that turns routine success into something greater.

Niall J

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