Graham Spiers backs the board with cowardly attack on Brendan Rodgers

Graham Spiers has joined the campaign backing the Celtic board against criticism from the Celtic Fans Collective which seems to have the sympathy of Brendan Rodgers.

On the back of a horrific weekend of running to The Sun to undermine the Celtic manager followed by a statement that went viral for all of the wrong reasons it has been suggested that the board has brought in PR professionals to state their case.

Out of nowhere Willie Haughey appeared on Go Radio on Wednesday with the takeaway line being that the Celtic support has been spoiled by recent successes- a headline happily picked up by legacy media outlets to attack Celtic fans.

A number of second level messengers have been running with the line that the 12th man protests at Rugby Park were a damp squib, that appears to be the agreed term of criticism.

Spiers has surpassed all of that in his trademark round the houses ‘style’.

The bottom line is that he has chosen to trash the claim that a source close to senior figures at Celtic Park was highly critical to Roger Hannah of The Sun.

Spiers isn’t far off suggesting that it could have been Rodgers that planted that story to paint himself in a sympathetic light!

Successful football managers use a variety of tactics, working the press is no longer as important as it was 20 or 30 years ago when a young Spiers was drooling over the sheer magnificence of Dave Murray.

While the tabloids got the bulk of the stories from the Rangers owner, Spiers, then at Scotland and Sunday was his broadsheet puppy, it worked well for both men as they advanced their careers.

When Celtic beat Rangers 5-1 in November 1998 Spiers produced a front page EXCLUSIVE! tale of Murray rivalling Real Madrid to sign Steve McManaman from Liverpool as a free agent! An absolute classic stunt.

Bizarrely Spiers’ dislike of Rodgers dates back to a pre-season friendly against a lower league Austrian side in which Anton Rodgers played for 45 minute, more than seven years have passed since Spiers was left traumatised

It seems that this incredible crime alerted the man from The Times that Rodgers was a master manipulator, someone to be viewed suspiciously at all times!

After slabbering his way through umpteen paragraphs Spiers finally starts to land some blows.

On his paywalled Patreon website, imaginatively titled Press Box he explains:

There is another layer to this, too, which is: Rodgers is a master media orchestrator.

He is superlative at creating the media narrative in his favour, and recent weeks in Glasgow have been a classic case of it.

Rodgers somehow contrived to fail to score against one of the worst Rangers teams in living memory and then was sent packing from the Champions League playground by a Kazakh team which Celtic – even with their August transfer fiasco – should have been able to deal with.

Yet the upshot? Rodgers has expertly made himself a Celtic hero in the eyes of supporters while someone inside the nasty Celtic boardroom has been “briefing” against him. I don’t believe this is what happened.

I will come back to this subject next week on here but I’m now convinced of this: no-one in the Celtic boardroom went to The Sun and said: “Here’s what is happening…put this in the public domain, the quotes, but just don’t put my name to it.” This is a story with strange layers attached.

Despite his threatening overtures to me in Austria I’ve actually never stopped liking Brendan Rodgers. I’ve always viewed him as a top manager. I think Celtic have been lucky to have him – twice – and he has really enhanced Scottish football. He has an aura about him which is hard to miss.

But I also have no doubt that, behind the scenes at Celtic, Brendan is a tough dealer. Not for a second can I conceive that someone of his singular mindedness is being maliciously treated, or pushed around, or being hunted out of a job. No chance. The Celtic board should – and I think will – call his bluff.

This will unfold in the weeks ahead as the Celtic AGM approaches. Rodgers left Celtic in early 2019, virtually taking off in the dark, scarcely stopping for his coat, having affected love and loyalty to the cause. He vanished, and within hours was appearing on that strange Leicester City video, welcoming him back to English football. He could very easily do it again.

Fortunately, or maybe not the whole article is reproduced on Kerrydale Street.

The master manipulator and orchestrator has been inside Celtic since October 2003.

Apparently Spiers was greatly troubled by a 45 minute appearance of Anton Rodgers and sought out a private meeting with the Celtic manager to discuss this mighty issue.

Rodgers seemingly threatened to withdraw co-operation with The Times, Spiers panicked and produced a watered down matey version of what he had planned as a scathing attack.

The notion that Rodgers was in any way bothered, upset or angry over a scathing attack from Spiers in The Times is laughable. He had slightly bigger issues to deal with than the ego of one of Dave Murray’s former cheerleaders.

Celtic’s PR strategy might involve planting stories with folk like Spiers to tarnish the reputation of Rodgers but it is as misguided as the classic September 6 statement.

Social media and fan media will be calling these tactics out wherever they appear.

If nepotism is such a concern for Spiers he might want to look into the career of Mark Lawwell, the surname might ring a bell.

During three horrendous transfer windows over £30m was flushed down the drain with five year contacts routinely handed out to under cooked punts and projects coming in from South Korea, Poland, Australia, Russia, Argentina.

Only Alistair Johnston has made any worthwhile contribution to Celtic with Odin Thiago Holm, Luis Palma and Maik Narocki still sitting on contracts that run until May 2028.

Meanwhile two weeks after a cowardly attack on the Celtic manager the reaction from the club seems to be to set up a rolling programme backing up the Bad Brendan narrative rather than identifying the snake and drumming them out the club.

The failure of anyone inside the club to speak up and back the manager is telling with Rodgers nine months from the end of his contract.