Celtic Diary Friday July 12 2024: Rodgers Takes Control ?

A second young player has turned down the chance to stay at Celtic and force his way into the team, and will now move on.

Daniel Kelly joins Rocco Vata on the Why didn’t We Give Them A Chance ? list, or as it’s also known the You’re Not Ready Yet list.

According to manager Brendan Rodgers, Kelly was told a few months ago

‘listen, if we can’t tidy this up by the summer, then it’s very hard to be with the team in pre-season’.  

When Riley McGee turned down Celtic for Middlesborough a few years ago, Ange Postecoglou just left it at that and went for Matt O’Riley,

Rodgers is doing the same here. Kelly, like Vata, doesn;t fancy his chances of breaking through, and the money elsewhere that has no doubt been dangled in front of him has perhaps skewed his own opinion of his worth.

Good luck to both of them.

Matt O’Riley, on the other hand, has been the subject of a £15m bid from Atalanta, and Celtic have rejected it out of hand. What isn;t being mentioned in the media is that the club’s reply was that he wasn’t for sale.

O’Riley, on instagram, didn’t seem to be someone who is even distracted by the transfer talk…

Money, big money, will come to O’Riley one day. It doesn’t have to be one day soon…

The word on the street from our pish stained mole is that a goalkeeper deal is pretty much done, and that goalkeeper is the lad Kelleher from Liverpool.

In fairness to our soaked soothsayer, for a player who wants to move from Merseyside, there has been little other speculation about his destiny.

He did also mention that Brendan Rodgers is here for the long haul, something to do with his new house apparently, which hints at him being allowed to build the team he wants in the way he wants, which is why he came back in the first place, so perhaps there is a little more stability behind the scenes than at first thought.

By stability I mean the manager is getting what he wants…but we will see.

When Rocco Vata turned Celtic down, Rodgers told him that he would be one of three strikers at the club, so reading between the lines, as we only have one at the moment, given that Rodgers doesn’t seem to like Oh, then that suggests two more incoming.

If, as expected, one of those is Adam Idah, then that still leaves room for one other, but it is hard to see why a top class forward would want to come as third choice.

So Lawrence Shankland would fit the bill perfectly, as it would both weaken Hearts and annoy “rangers ” at the same time.

Sometimes buying a player isn’t about what he can do for you, it’s about stopping him doing it for someone else..

The 6-4 friendly win over Queen’s Park was certainly a way of dusting off the cobwebs, and not too much should be read into it, in fact, with the American tour just a few days away, not much should be read into any of these games, but what might be important is having a few new faces on the plane.

If , as we hear, a couple of deals are nearly done, then an announcement could, and maybe should, be made today, as we normally like to do that sort of thing on a Friday.

Maybe even wearing the new away kit…..

Elsewhere, and Phillipe Clement, the temporary manager at Ibrox …or wherever they end up playing…has given us an insight into his coaching methods by wearing a microphine during a training session….

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In the months to come it’ll be something to remember him by.

His club continue to stumble from one problem to another. It looks like they’re about to strike a deal to play their home games at Hampden for the foreseeable future…if, indeed, they have a foreseeable future, which is a little bit odd when you consider it’s only a bit of steel they need , and they don’t seem to be looking for it anywhere else.

They don’t know when it’s coming…which is odd because I’d have thought that would have been the first question when the supplier said it would be late.

And let’s be honest, if something is going to be a month late, you’d probably nip to the co op to see if they sell it…

This leads to the conclusion, after sifting through the available evidence, and carefully weighing it all up, that someone is not  being entirely truthful.

Maybe our media could find the guy they sacked…maybe they could ask him to put forward his case, and throw a little bit of light on what happened…

If he exists, that is.

At least they’re keeping their fans in the loop…or a noose, depending on how you look at it.

Cup games ? The knockout stages of the League Cup begin in August, and are once a month until the final in December.  They’re not being overly optimistic about the ground being ready anytime soon, are they ?

These two pictures were taken weeks apart….one on the 21st of June, the other the 8th of July

The progress report reads;

” Moved crane along a bit ”

Fortunately, their support can look forward to our intrepid investigative mainstream reporters rooting around the place to get to the truth.

Although, one does understand that any digging of dirt around Ibrox may cause the place to fall down, so they’ll have to be careful.

Mind you, it’s not all bad news for the bears….

At WWE Clash at the Castle, WWE faced backlash after releasing merchandise that was very clearly inspired/based up on the home kit of the Glasgow Rangers, formerly Rangers, football team.

The design was later pulled, however, during a recent Rangers fan advisory board meeting the topic of WWE came up and Rangers are more than open to working with the sports entertainment giants.

Speaking on the matter, the Rangers Business Growth Director, Natalie Nairn, revealed that the club are in talks with the WWE.

CH mentioned the WWE ‘Clash at the Castle’ top being dropped due to its resemblance to the Rangers strip and asked if there was any chance of expanding the link with WWE.

NN advised that this is scope to look at a collaboration and are in contact with WWE.”  

We await the media announcement

 Fake Sport To Sponsor Fake Club

On Wednesday, we had this…

Today