Brendan Rodgers HAS been vindicated – the year we’ve witnessed at Celtic since his departure tells us that much…
No director of football. No head of recruitment. No permanent chairman. Brendan Rodgers left a year ago and the people who blamed him have still not fixed a thing.
Eric Knott 
26th October 2025; Tynecastle Park, Edinburgh, Scotland: Scottish Premiership Football, Hearts versus Celtic; Celtic Manager Brendan Rodgers speaks during the press conference after the match
It is exactly one year to the day since Brendan Rodgers walked out of Celtic, and the Daily Record has marked the occasion by asking whether he has been vindicated.
Well, let me save them the trouble.
He has.
People who are still clinging onto the belief that Brendan Rodgers was the problem at Celtic should seriously consider letting go of that belief.
Because if he was the cause of all our woes, then Celtic as a club would be flying high right now, wouldn’t it?
If Rodgers was the problem, we’d be safely qualified in the Champions League by now.
We’d still be on course for another treble.
Our squad would be united, and stronger than ever under the leadership of a club legend.
Well, we’re under the leadership of a club legend alright, but not quite in the way you’d have hoped.
Martin O’Neill deserves enormous credit for what he has done – but he has been left to do it with one hand tied behind his back.
Yes, we’re sitting pretty at the top of the Scottish Premiership, with nine wins from 10 and one of the best starts to a league campaign in 20 years.
Rodgers only had 17 points from nine games when he left, and I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t matter.
But we’re all acutely aware of the way things have gone in every other competition we’ve been involved in.
The Champions League exit to LASK, the league and Premier Sport Cup defeats to the Ibrox side, and three Europa League losses on the bounce.
That is not a club moving forward.
If we were in a bad position this time last year, we’re in an absolute mess a year later.
None of the blame for that lies at Brendan Rodgers’ door now.
You can attempt to say that it does, but it is clear that it does not.
Brendan Rodgers wasn’t responsible for nine loan signings being brought into the club in the last two transfer windows.
NINE!
He wasn’t responsible for Wilfried Nancy lasting 33 days in the job either.
He wasn’t responsible for Paul Tisdale being shown the door in January, and he’s certainly not responsible for the fact that there is still no replacement for him.
No director of football.
No official head of recruitment.
And no permanent chairman to replace Peter Lawwell, a full year after the man who was supposedly the problem left the building.
The Daily Record’s own man compared Parkhead to Grand Designs, where the rebuild hasn’t started and the family are living on site in a caravan.
I’d say that’s fair, only the family in this scenario is us, and we’re the ones who paid for the caravan.
He wasn’t responsible for one of the most embarrassing nights in our European history.
Many would say that Kairat Almaty was our most embarrassing night in Europe.
Not so.
LASK Linz eclipsed that.
Out of the Champions League against LASK, with the board’s fingerprints all over it.
Kairat was a night where the board stripped our squad of its goal threat and dared the manager to make do.
LASK was a night where they did it all over again.
And who was in the dugout for it?
Not Rodgers.
Dermot Desmond told us what the problem was, and he was spectacularly wrong.
Cast your mind back to the statement the night Rodgers left.
Here is what Dermot Desmond had to say, as reported by the Daily Record:
What has failed recently was not due to our structure or model, but to one individual’s desire for self-preservation at the expense of others.
Our structure and our model.
Not the problem, apparently.
It was one individual.
Well, that one individual has now been gone for 12 months, and the structure and the model are still delivering exactly the same results they always did.
Late recruitment, loans papering over the cracks, and a manager who has to fight fires that were lit in the boardroom.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and canonise the man.
There is a school of thought inside Parkhead that Rodgers manoeuvred his own exit, that he was slippery on contract talks and walked away without a payout because the Saudi move was already on the cards.
And who knows?
Maybe he did.
He may well have seen an escape route and taken it.
But two things can be true at the same time, and the other one is that he was getting exasperated by a lack of ambition, the time taken over transfers and targets missed because of wage caps.
Every one of those complaints is still alive and well today.
Scott Bain, who played under him, reckons people will appreciate that spell more as time passes.
I think we’re appreciating it a lot quicker than he thinks.
Because it takes a year of watching the alternative to understand what you had.
Yes, Brendan Rodgers has been truly vindicated, and it is time to accept that he was never the problem at Celtic.
We all know who, and what, the problems are.
Keep your eyes on the board…
Key Takeaways
- Brendan Rodgers has been vindicated a year after leaving Celtic, as the club struggles in key competitions.
- Under current leadership, Celtic has not progressed, highlighting issues that were not caused by Rodgers.
- The board’s decisions, including numerous loan signings and lack of recruitment structure, have led to ongoing failures.
- Dermot Desmond’s claims about the club’s problems being solely down to Rodgers have proven incorrect after a year of poor results.
- Fans are beginning to appreciate Rodgers’ tenure more, recognising that he was not the problem at Celtic.
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