Brendan Rodgers calls it the Celtic small print. Oh sure, all the big-ticket stuff looks great during the hard sell. When Celtic make their play to sign someone there is plenty in the locker to lay it on thick. Join us and perform in front of 60,000 adoring fans with millions more worldwide, they can say. Be fêted by half of Glasgow and beyond. The fillings in your teeth will rattle when the Champions League theme booms out at Parkhead. Enjoy packed away ends at every game on the road. Be in a winning team. Savour league titles, cup final triumphs, doubles, trebles, goals and glory. Be a big deal.
It all sounds perfectly mouthwatering when you put it like that. There’s a darker side to being on the Celtic payroll, though, and that can mean anything from anxiety and negativity washing down from the stands when results aren’t going well to the extreme — in November 2020 — of a mob turning violent in the stadium car park, chucking security fences at police vans and hurling missiles and verbal abuse at the players to the extent they were given a police escort to get away. That after their first defeat in a domestic cup tie after 35 consecutive wins.
Rodgers was not at Celtic then, it was on former manager Neil Lennon’s watch, and of their squad only Callum McGregor, Greg Taylor, Anthony Ralston, Stephen Welsh and James Forrest are still around three-and-a-bit years later. For now, the stumbling form which has allowed Rangers to take over at the top of the Premiership for the first time in 18 months has brought focus and anger on the Celtic board in general and on chairman Peter Lawwell in particular. The recent chants and banners have been directed there and Friday’s interim accounts showing £67 million in the bank account irritated many fans given the obvious need for signings to improve a mediocre squad. Rodgers is well aware that he and the players will be hauled into the firing line if Celtic do finish second for only the second time in 13 seasons.
“In my experience of our home games, Celtic Park has been an amazing place to play,” he said. “But it’s in the small print. There’s pressure and you have to deal with it. For players coming here it’s great when you can look on YouTube and see 60,000 fans singing You’ll Never Walk Alone at Celtic Park or Champions League games. But in the small print it says, by the way, there’s big pressure. Deal with it. You have to accept that.
“For a lot of these guys [Celtic’s signings over the past two transfer windows] coming into a team which has won eight and drawn two, they can’t understand it because in any other league that’s OK results-wise. But you learn quickly it’s more than that here. It’s difficult for any player or manager to come into a club where the expectations are absolutely huge, if you’ve never felt or sensed anything like that before. At a club like this, that comes onto you pretty quickly. So this is all part of a phase of players getting used to the expectation.
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“You can prepare and can create an illusion of what it might be and might feel like. But not until you actually feel it yourself and go through the process do you really understand it. That’s why I give huge admiration to players who come here, because the expectations are so high in this environment, as high as anywhere I’ve ever been in my career.
“That’s why I’m always keen to support the players and bring them through that. Every man and his dog will criticise them now. It’s my job and that of the coaching staff to help these players, especially when a lot of them are young players. This is a journey for them to come through to be a Celtic player.”
For the newest of them, that came two days after he signed. After his loan move from Norwich City, Adam Idah figured a 1-1 draw on his debut at Pittodrie was a satisfactory outcome. “There’s obviously a big difference between Norwich and here,” he said. “My first game was at Aberdeen and when we drew I thought, ‘OK, decent result’… and it definitely wasn’t. I’m not used to it. It’s not like that in England, where you can get a draw here and there. Up here you need to win every game. It’s a great learning curve. To have that mentality of needing to win is great, and the lads who have been here for a while understand that.”
The Celtic support is demanding, sometimes oppressively so, but they know a malfunctioning team when they see one. They have enjoyed enough fabulous football from their club, including under Rodgers first time around, to know that what they are watching now is average and alarming given Rangers’ recent improvement. In six games since the winter break, Celtic have drawn with Aberdeen and Kilmarnock and been laboured, unimpressive and stressed in narrow wins against Ross County and Hibs.
A storm is brewing if their performances and results do not improve. They have five league games before the Old Firm fixture at Ibrox on April 7 and three of those are away, at Motherwell at noon today, against Hearts at Tynecastle on March 3 and Livingston at the Tony Macaroni Arena on March 31.
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“This title race is going to be brilliant for the league,” said Rodgers, momentarily sounding like a detached neutral when, in fact, his own reputation and standing with the Celtic support will be shaped by its outcome. He always has been a manager who exudes calm and control, but he is in uncharted territory here. Celtic have never done anything but lead from the front under him, through seven domestic trophies from seven first time around to league leaders from day one of this season until last Sunday when Rangers won at St Johnstone to take over.
How he would react and cope with a sustained application of pressure in a title race, to no longer being top of the league and chasing rather than being chased, has been intriguing since he first arrived at Celtic nearly eight years ago. Everyone is about to find out. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “For me, it’s about 38 games. I’ve heard this throughout my career, that I’ve never had [to face] this before or that before. That’s normal. It’s the world we’re in.”
