Peter Martin hits out at his Celtic media ban

Peter Martin has hit out at Celtic’s media ban on PLZ Soccer, claiming that it was because of warranted and merited criticism of Celtic’s early season performances.

It seems like the memory of the PLZ anchorman is playing tricks, the reason that PLZ Soccer hasn’t had media access to Celtic is due to a tweet from Martin’s personal Twitter account at 7.02am on June 12 BEFORE Rodgers had been appointed as Celtic manager.

The previous evening Stephen McGowan of the Daily Mail had revealed that Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay had visited Rodgers in Santa Ponsa with talks progressing well towards returning to replace Ange Postecoglou as Celtic manager. The Celtic Chairman wasn’t involved.

On June 19, a week after the very personal and unsubstantiated criticism by Martin it was announced that the Irishman had signed a three year contract to return as Celtic manager.

For reasons best known to himself Martin decided to rewrite history following comments from the Celtic boss at today’s media conference.

3 minutes 36 seconds:

I have absolutely no problem with Brendan Rodgers having a dig at people. He’s won the league, a manager is perfectly entitled to do that. Sometimes, you know, the people that have criticised him they don’t get the full context of it, they get basically a headline or a line fed to them by their PR people. Or he’s seen a clip that has come out from broadcasters, or radio, or been told second hand on things but I don’t begrudge him the chance to have a boot back, a punch at people, this is what he had to say

RODGERS TODAY: “WHAT EXPERIENCE HAS GIVEN ME IS NOT TO BE TOO EMOTIONAL WITH WORDS AND THERE’S BEEN LOTS OF THAT TRACING BACK TO AUGUST. I HAD TO SHOW A MENTAL STRENGTH. IT’S SATISFYING IN THE WORK WE’VE BEEN ABLE TO DO. I HADN’T LOST HUNGER AND I WASN’T GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS”

Martin continued:

He’s clearly been stung by a fair bit of criticism. Some of the criticism at the start was warranted, merited as well. Because quite simply, well some of the criticism at the start was merited, warranted and when you made it you were banned.

We got banned for criticising him, some others people were banned for criticising him so clearly there is a tetchy team in the background who don’t really like anybody telling the truth about him. That’s me had my say on him.

Below is the tweet that Rodgers clearly took objection to, why invite someone with that mindset in to question how you perform in your job when he clearly has some serious issues with the very prospect of Rodgers getting the job, calling out his commitment and professionalism.