Brendan Rodgers employs new Lennoxtown media tactic to fight back against Celtic narrative.
This week, Celtics manager Brendan Rodgers tried to alter the perception of his squad this season with a cunning PR strategy.
Following Sunday’s thrilling comeback against Motherwell in the second half, Rodgers was somewhat terse when speaking with media and made headlines for a conversation he had with BBC Radio Scotland.
He makes it obvious that he believes his side has been unfairly criticized this season and expresses his opinion that the media has played a part in this.
This week, the Bhoys manager met at Lenoxtown with a small group of print press writers to discuss his tactical approach and provide some video evidence. The manager is now aggressively addressing the preconceptions surrounding his squad.
According to The Daily Record, he spent about thirty minutes on Tuesday giving reporters a tactical tuition by showing them different Celtic goals from the previous several seasons, both from the Ange Postecoglou period and those made while he was in charge.
According to Keith Jackson’s analysis, Rodgers was trying to demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, there are more tactical parallels between his strategy and Postecoglou’s.
Despite all the criticism, AngeBall, as many dubbed it, had a great reputation during the Australian’s stint, and it appears that the current Celtic manager feels his system isn’t too dissimilar.
It does demonstrate that Rodgers is retaliating against his detractors rather than passively allowing his position and authority to be undermined, regardless of whether the argument is sound or not.
We want to see him be enthusiastic about Celtic’s prospects and take pleasure in his work; such an attitude would undoubtedly improve output and performance.
In the end, hard decisions on a manager’s performance are made based on data collected from the field. Few would disagree that at times this season, Celtic has appeared cumbersome and lethargic, with some of the game appearing to be a world away from the Postecoglou era.
Is that more a result of Rodgers’ strategies than of a lower caliber of player? Maybe the manager wants questions like this one out there.
In either case, there’s still hope that these players may reclaim the kind of relentlessness that characterized the previous two seasons since, happily, attacking play has been much more direct and incisive in recent games.
A lot of the criticism directed at Rodgers will start to fade if he can lead Celtic on a winning streak and motivate his team to play as well as they did on Wednesday night.
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