Brendan Rodgers - A flyman from day one.

It’s rare to see Celtic fans unanimous in agreement on the internet.

In the last twenty four hours, every Celtic account of minor and major relevance have rallied together to lambast the conman who posed as our old manager, every Celtic podcast recorded something as soon as the news had broken about Rodgers jumping ship, and even Peter Lawwell wasn’t being portrayed as the villain of the piece for once. Everyone targeted Brendan ‘My surname is actually Tommy Burns’ Rodgers.

And rightly so.

He is, and always has been, a manipulative, false and untrustworthy man who was finally found out yesterday by many, but sadly I was never convinced about this ‘gentleman’ and his qualities even when he arrived almost three years ago.

I, along with my friends, made the trip to Celtic Park at the end of May 2016 to witness his appointment being confirmed. It was a big deal for the club, to be getting in a proven manager at the top level after a tiring few years with Ronny Deila in charge.

Looking back on it, the procession for him was a mistake. It fed his ego, which was already massive despite never winning anything with a Liverpool team with one hand on that Premiership title at the time, and from there on his mask was firmly attached.

The lies would soon follow, about how a Rangers fan stopped him in the clyde tunnel and said how brilliant he was, to this absolute stoater regarding an old woman who no one has a clue exists, even to this day. If you’re too lazy to bother clicking and scrolling for that quote, here it is :

“My biggest pleasure is seeing the happiness in people. People will talk at New Year about the big moments. I have two things that spring to mind. One is seeing the happiness of the people when we’ve played well and won.

“But the biggest is probably an old lady Patsy, who is in her 70s. She stands outside our hotel for every game we play whether it’s raining, whether it’s snowing, covered up with Celtic gear. She wears her Brendan hat, her Brendan scarf. Her son came up to me not so long ago and said ‘Thank you so much, you’ve given her a new lease of life’. That makes me as happy as picking up a trophy.

Not an ounce of self awareness whatsoever.

At the time I remember saying ‘shut up you utter embarrassment’ and many others should have been doing the same, but our fans were fooled and fell for his charm, and like a true wideo he knew he wouldn’t be pillared for that, so got away with lie after lie, most recently one about hiding during an orange walk. Did it even exist, Brendan ? He mouthed off about that after a week of EVERYONE piling in with their own ‘sectarianism story’. He couldn’t resist a headline for himself, so made up another tale just for the patter.

His ‘rant’ about the Sky journalist in September 2016 is the defining moment in which you can see this is a man concerned purely about his image on the camera more than anything. After Dembele’s hat-trick against Rangers in the 5-1 game, an interviewer’s ‘Leigh Who?’ gag was met with false and insincere dismay from Rodgers, giving it the ‘Don’t uhhhhh disrespect Leigh Griffiths’ instead of blanking it, or talking up Dembele right away, but sadly instead of many seeing through his fake soundbite, a lot of fans said ‘class, this guy is so classy’. Sorry boys, he is anything but.

As for his success on the pitch - fine. No one can take away the job he did, but any reader of this site will surely realise not once did I ever wax lyrical about his achievements. I felt it was well within his capabilities of achieving every domestic trophy, just like I felt it was also Ronny Deila’s before him, and also Neil Lennon’s in 12/13 and 13/14.

His European exploits were utterly shameful, and he will forever be remembered as the man who made us a complete joke in the Champions League.

Indeed, his greatest European achievement at Celtic was a 1-0 defeat away to Valencia, which speaks volumes about his legacy in that respect. (okay, maybe it was beating Anderlecht away, but it feels such a long time ago and an irrelevant detail now)

Brendan Rodgers had money to spend. He recruited players and staff aplenty. He had enormous resources compared to every other manager in the league. He wasn’t taking over a squad fighting relegation, he inherited winners, international footballers and guys who had been playing at a high level for some time.

What was he up against ? Mark Warburton’s bipolar Rangers. Derek McInnes unbelievably fragile Aberdeen, Ian Cathro’s brittle Hearts, with Hibs nowhere to be seen and the rest of the league made up of irrelevant nobodies, while he was equipped with the best personnel available to him at his disposal, and he was heralded as a God for it ? Bitch please.

Rodgers swaggered about up here like a Roman gladiator against a malnourished peasant, with barely any humility.

His behaviour yesterday was tacky, classless and unsurprising in the slightest. A man who tried to paint Moussa Dembele as an enemy of Celtic not so long ago as well, with world class manipulation in plain sight, and people just took his side because of course ‘St Brendan’ cannot be doubted.

He had been working his ticket since August, and this was what he wanted.

A highly suspect individual, whose traits are ones that many should learn from and in future think twice about lauding as a messiah.

Good riddance to bad symptoms.