The more you look at it, the more you think three years back in Paradise will be enough for Rodgers, writes Gary Keown

BRENDAN RODGERS sat deep inside Tannadice after sealing his fourth title over two spells as Celtic manager and made an emphatic statement to those speculating over his future: You don’t know me – you don’t understand me.

Armand van Helden made a song about that once. All that was missing was the Brodge firing up the ghetto blaster from the dressing-room and taking us back to the Nineties by doing a wee David Brent dance to it around the media lounge.

Rodgers’ point was that he keeps a very tight circle around him and that those second-guessing his intentions are doing exactly that. Guessing.

Waiting sagely for the full facts before forming a rounded opinion isn’t the way folk roll in Glasgow, though. Or anywhere, really, when it comes to football. The will-he, won’t-he debate over Rodgers’ intentions ahead of the conclusion of his contract next year is unlikely to go away any time soon.

As Rangers prepare for a tsunami of change under American ownership, Celtic have to be planning for the longer term too. There’s no question the vast majority of punters, firmly back behind their boss after that little Leicester City lapse a few years back, would like the 52-year-old to carry on this chapter in his career and build on the progress made over the past nine months or so.

However, the more you look at the situation – and the more you deconstruct what Rodgers says – the more you suspect calling it a day at the end of next term might well be the best thing for him.

Yes, he spent the build-up to this afternoon’s final Old Firm clash of the season at Ibrox talking about how he thrives on the pressure that exists at the champions.

It’s way greater than anything he experienced competing for a Premier League title at Liverpool, he said. You can still be booed off the park by your own punters even if you win. It’s easy to see why good players who come to Glasgow wither and fail.

He might well love all that, but it takes its toll over time. Add in the fact you are regarded as public property in the west of Scotland, that it’s hard to go out with your family and be given peace, and you can easily grasp why the novelty fades.

Talk to the majority of blokes who have managed either side of the Old Firm over the years and they will tell you that those jobs have a very definite lifespan.

Some cannot cope with it from the get-go. Yet, even many of the best have conceded – and do concede – that it gets to you over the piece. Wears you down. Just becomes too demanding.

When one of those successful coaches from yesteryear, Martin O’Neill, travelled to Lennoxtown ahead of Celtic’s trip to Bayern Munich in February, the matter was spoken about in a TV interview. Rodgers reiterated something he said three months earlier and something that has never been far from the surface since his return.

‘At the end of my contract next year, I’ll be here nearly six years, which is a long time,’ he remarked. What he meant, specifically, is that it is a long time to be a Celtic manager.

He touched on it again at Tannadice, when stating ‘the big thing with Celtic is about having the energy’.

Maybe Rodgers will fancy extending his stay. Maybe he just sees worth in leaving wisps of doubt over his future because the January transfer window didn’t deliver what he wanted and having a little bit of leverage against the board when the market reopens can’t be bad.

Yet, you look at his situation and see an elephant in the room. What more can he really achieve at Parkhead? And wouldn’t hanging around beyond the end of this deal jeopardise the legacy he has managed to repair and establish during this second time around?

Rodgers stated his primary incentive in accepting major shareholder Dermot Desmond’s offer to return was to put Celtic back on the map in Europe after the best part of two decades being cannon fodder.

In that regard, he has delivered, to a large degree. Beating RB Leipzig, then flying high in the Bundesliga, in the group stage gave him the landmark win that never materialised during his first period as head coach.

The display in Munich in the play-offs, a goal up and heading for extra-time until a flukey last-gasp equaliser, did him a real power of good, though. In truth, the group stage had been a little bit of a mixed bag. Taking Bayern to the wire on their own patch, however, was a proper display of proving you can punch above your weight.

Of course, real bona-fide success would have been making the last 16 and Rodgers will fancy another crack at achieving that next season. The new-look structure of UEFA competitions puts a ceiling on where Celtic can go, though.

Get through the qualifiers and into the Champions League proper and there’s no longer any safety net to allow you a soft landing in the Europa League. You can only go so far in that environment and last 16 is probably it. Talk of matching the likes of O’Neill and getting to a European final has to be sacrificed if you want to keep banking that prize money from the premier competition.

Of course, Europe wasn’t the only big reason for Rodgers’ return. He wanted to repair the damage done when he jumped ship mid-season to Leicester in 2019. He wanted to heal that open wound, to re-engage with the fanbase that, almost to a man, woman and child, felt betrayed.

He has done that now. And he surely knows how delicate an operation it will be to protect and preserve the fact he is loved again, as he always wanted to be.

Last term was an ace away from going pear-shaped. Whilst not the defining factor, it definitely helped that then Rangers boss Philippe Clement slowly came apart in the pressure cooker described earlier as his side lost their bottle.

Things can alter quickly, though. The involvement of 49ers Enterprises is going to change Rangers for the better. If you play the percentages, the chances are they have too much wreckage to sift through to win the league against a Celtic set-up with hefty resources and a far stronger infrastructure next term.

But their track record suggests they will make the Ibrox club more of a force year on year. Progressively more of a danger.

Rodgers seems more pragmatic than in his first spell. Back then, he would talk about solving sectarianism in Scotland. Nowadays, he accepts he hasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of receiving a Guard of Honour at Ibrox.

He can’t be accused of pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes this time. He has given no guarantees over completing more than three years of service

Right now, he looks like becoming the first Celtic manager to complete three domestic Trebles. Make a fist of it again in Europe next term, win another title to put a dampener on the revolution brewing across Glasgow and you are almost talking about a legacy being as complete as it can be.

The removal of an automatic route into the Champions League throws up awkward qualifiers at awkward times of the campaign. A reinforced Rangers will win the league again sometime. And there’s a lot to be said in football for getting out when you’re winning.

Rodgers is there now. He can go back to his place in Majorca next summer and take a breath. Maybe wait for something different – in Spain, or wherever – that energises him.

Who knows? We are only guessing. We don’t know, for sure, what he’s planning. But it’s not hard to understand why that might make perfect sense.

McKinlay has always been a strange fit for crisis-torn Hearts

WHEN weighing up whether CEO Andrew McKinlay has the nous, the passion, the natural feel for the game that it will take to get Hearts out of the mire, it is hard to get beyond an interview he conducted with Mail Sport, of all people, back in 2018.

He’d just left his role as stand-in chief executive of the Scottish FA to head up Scottish Golf. He’d decided more than a year earlier, he said, that he’d never be interested in running the SFA whenever then-figurehead Stewart Regan left.

Fair enough. These roles in Scottish football do come with baggage. He had kids at school. Work-life balance is important.

It’s what he says he felt about Scottish football when he jumped ship to amateur golf – a sport that discovered, post-Covid, that it wasn’t as financially robust as first thought – that grates slightly, though.

‘When it came to 3pm on a Saturday, I didn’t feel I wanted to watch a game of football,’ he confessed.

‘I never fell out of love with the Scotland team. That is probably a different emotional attachment, but I struggled a wee bit with club football.’

Look, we all go through periods where the importance of football changes. Where we maybe don’t go as much. But can you really have your finger on the pulse running a club when, not all that long ago, it looks like the national sport was well down your list of priorities on a Saturday afternoon?

Whatever the realities of that, McKinlay took over at Hearts within a couple of years of that interview and is in the thick of it now.

A bad appointment in the binned Neil Critchley, an inadequate squad, stupid statements effectively blaming referees for a grim season and, now, a media gag that backfired spectacularly have him under P.

Titfers off to Adam Binnie of Sky Sports for buttonholing the Jambos as they went into their Player of the Year event the day after Critchley copped it. That stuff used to be staple fare in reporting and remains important now that clubs like to hide behind the gates of their training grounds and websites.

Captain Lawrence Shankland has admitted smirking as he was asked about Critchley – while keeping his trap shut, as ordered by those on high – looked awful. Chairman Ann Budge hardly came across well either as she merrily shrugged off Critchley’s dismissal as ‘yesterday’s news’.

Sadly, it isn’t. Hearts rattling through managers like Hibs in the bad old days is a hot topic. If anything, Budge, fine a job as she did to save and rebuild the club, is the one starting to look like old hat.

McKinlay has a job on his hands to stay relevant, too. At Hearts, given the ownership model and the money they pour into the place so admirably, fans are in a better place than most to call out those at the top.

Unless McKinlay turns the ship around quickly, it won’t be long before he finds himself in the situation again of considering how best to fill his weekends – and whether football is still engaging enough for a place in the mix.