Source: BBC Football
Rodgers v Desmond: Analysing the Celtic falloutImage source,SNSByTom EnglishBBC Scotland’s chief sports writerPublished28 October 2025At first, the farewell – and then the filleting.Monday night brought two statements from Celtic Park, one from the club announcing that Brendan Rodgers had resigned, the other from major shareholder Dermot Desmond excoriating the now ex-manager in the most incendiary fashion.There are two sides to every story – and so we wait for Rodgers’ version.In the meantime, it’s worth a close examination of the precise words that came out of Celtic on Monday and how they sat with what we knew or what we thought we knew.Celtic manager latest: ‘I had 10 minutes to make up my mind’ – O’NeillHow irretrievable breakdown led to savage separation for Rodgers & CelticPublished6 days ago”Celtic Football Club can confirm that football manager Brendan Rodgers has today tendered his resignation.”Nobody really expected Brendan Rodgers to be at Celtic next season, but equally nobody thought that he was about to resign. During the week, he said he “was never more motivated in my time at Celtic.”In the wake of the 3-1 loss to Hearts on Sunday he said: “I’ve never worked harder in all my time here. So the motivation is there to try and flip the levels that we’re at. It’s absolutely fine, it’s still so early. I think that’s the key point in it all. We’ve just got to hang in there at this moment, find those performances, find the results and hopefully our levels will improve as the season goes on.”Just over 24 hours later he was gone. It begs the question – the first of many – what changed? The rest of these quotes are drawn from Desmond’s own statement.”In June, both Michael Nicholson and I (Dermot Desmond) expressed to Brendan that we were keen to offer him a contract extension, to reaffirm the club’s full backing and long-term commitment to him. He said he would need to think about it and revert. Yet in subsequent press conferences, Brendan implied that the club had made no commitment to offer him a contract. That was simply untrue.”All of this is open to interpretation. Only those in the room know exactly what was said, but we can analyse Rodgers’ version from closer to the time. In August he said all three parties had a conversation “on where we were at and where it sits with myself and everything else and I said I’m very happy here.”Rodgers pointed out to the media that “when the club feels there’s that time to make an offer then they will do.” In September, Rodgers said that hadn’t “had an offer yet to think over and until that comes I am not going to be so arrogant to say I want to be here for another three years. The club might not want me here. I have to respect that. Until there’s something serious on a piece of paper, I continue to do my job.”Desmond is entitled to ask why Rodgers was publicly saying “the club might not want me here” when, as Desmond claims, Rodgers had already been told in June that he was wanted. But was he actual…
Published: 2025-10-28T17:10:22
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