Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic legacy: Will he achieve the ultimate legacy? Or will the board ensure it doesn’t happen?

Last Tuesday night was effectively the final nail in the coffin of Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic career.

Not through choice, but by design.

We knew it was unlikely that he would sign a new contract before the disaster in Almaty, but that night to forget made a hard decision easy for Rodgers.

If he ever harboured any interest in extending his time at our club, it died on that horrible surface at the Central Stadium in Almaty on Tuesday night.

When I think of Rodgers’ situation at the moment, it brings me back to February 2017, during the Irishman’s first stint at the club.

Back then, as Celtic fans, we felt like we were living the dream.

Rodgers had transformed us into an unstoppable machine, which would go on to record a British record for the longest unbeaten run, and an invincible treble along the way.

Those people who have the knives out for him today would do well to remember that.

But when I say I think of February 2017, its not Rodgers I’m thinking of, its Mark Warburton, his opposite number across the city at that time.

Warburton was “resigned” from his position as Ibrox manager without being informed that such action had been taken.

He instead found out by watching Sky Sports news that he had “resigned”.

It was the first he’d heard of it.

How is that relevant to anything going on now, you ask?

Well, to a degree it is, because I feel that a decision was taken by our board to “resign” Brendan Rodgers at the end of this season.

Now, they wouldn’t do it in the kind of crass and unprofessional manner that the Ibrox side did.

Instead, they have done it in a much more devious and underhanded way.

To put this into context, try and picture Brendan Rodgers as the head mechanic of a Formula One team.

Imagine that the team principal consistently fails to supply him with the parts required to keep both cars in the team running at optimum levels.

He consistently has to use second hand, or inferior parts to keep the cars going.

This happens either by design, or through utter incompetence.

Take your pick.

But the bottom line is that without the right parts, the Formula One cars in this team cannot compete at the highest level.

The team principal consistently blames the head mechanic for poor performances.

But the head mechanic knows he’s getting a raw deal here.

He knows he cannot continue to work under these conditions.

And it kills him, because he knows this Formula One team could easily be a top six team.

It could even compete for the Championship if it only had better, forward thinking leadership.

But if you do not evolve with Formula One, Formula One will evolve without you.

It keeps moving forward, at a ferocious pace.

And if you can’t keep up?

You get left behind, its that simple.

Old fashioned politics and an inability to move forward have seen many famous Formula One teams fall away to the back of the grid.

And in some cases, disappear from the sport altogether.

Teams like Lotus, Brabham, Benneton and Tyrell, all won Championships, but are no longer part of the sport.

The moral of the story here?

Failure to move with the times effects every sport, football is no different.

The Celtic board is stuck using methods that might have worked in the early 2000’s, but just will not cut it now.

A stubborn unwillingness to move with the times has caused many failures for the club at the highest level in the sport.

We persist in supplying the manager with inferior parts for his team, just like my Formula One analogy.

Brendan Rodgers has, or should I say had, a vision for the team.

He knew what parts/players he needed to realise his vision, but without them, he cannot deliver the success he wants to.

For whatever reason, either by incompetence, or by design, the board has chosen not to supply him with what he needed.

At this point in time, it has to be by design, because through these actions, they have effectively pushed through his resignation as the manager at the end of this season.

The Celtic board is blinded by it’s almost quarter century old vision for the club.

If managers do not buy into their vision, they are “resigned”.

In essence, every Celtic manager has a glass ceiling, which they will never push through.

Therefore, it is clear now that the board are the problem.

Not Brendan Rodgers, and not all of the managers who went before him, experiencing the exact same pattern.

Rodgers naively believed that things would change, in fact, he believed that things had changed, when he returned to Celtic in 2023.

He has found out, to his detriment, that nothing changed.

Nothing at all.

He walked into the exact same movie he left for Leicester City in 2019.

So now, the remainder of this season is about his Celtic legacy.

It is about what he leaves behind when he walks out the door of the manager’s office for the final time at the end of the season.

Here’s a truth bomb for all of you out there who are attempting to blame Brendan Rodgers for this debacle.

What Brendan Rodgers does from here on out will be for us, the Celtic fans.

And finally, for himself, to ensure that his legacy is intact, and that he can walk away with his head held high.

Knowing that he did the best he could possibly do, under the circumstances enforced upon him by the Celtic board.

I believe it will be epic.

I believe that Brendan Rodgers has the ability to defy all of the odds.

That he has the ability to make the team gel and deliver results, despite missing vital parts.

Just like the head mechanic in the Formula One team.

How vital those parts are remains to be seen, as the last few days of the transfer window will make that patently clear.

When Brendan Rodgers walks away from this club, he will leave us under no illusions as to what it was our out of touch board allowed to walk away.

Or in effect, “resigned”.

He will set his sights on nothing less than a treble, and a run deep into the Europa League.

He will leave us with memories that will last us a lifetime.

And he will do all of this to spite our board.

Of this, I have no doubt.

He will do it for us because he came back for us.

That will be his parting gift.

And he will leave with his head held high.

Anything less, he will perceive as failure.

The Celtic board does not deserve him.

But we, the fans, do.

Brendan Rodgers epitomises the ideology of what our club should really be.

Our board does not.

That is why their time is up.

#Sack the board

#Renewal is coming