Rodgers was there for the taking! Wild claims from Herald Chief McFarlane

As Brendan Rodgers prepares to finish off yet another manager from Ibrox Jonny McFarlane has been recalling how the Celtic boss was there for the taking.

Both under Micky Beale and then now with Phil Clement in charge at Ibrox!

To be fair, McFarlane, the Head of Digital Sport for Newsquest, publishers of The Herald, National, Rangers Review, Celtic Way and others had been enjoying a 6.5% Craft Beer as he shared his thoughts on the Administration Day podcast from the Rangers Review.

Since launch in the summer of 2021 there has been precious little to celebrate for the bears at the Rangers Review.

In the absence of trophy wins they have provided in-depth moonbeams about how all matters Ibrox are moving along tickety-boo with glory just around the corner.

So far Steven Gerrard has bolted, Giovanni van Bronckhorst lasted 366 days with Beale lasting 10 months before being replaced by A Proper Football Manager.

As ever rewriting history is a speciality. Apparently van Bronckhorst should never have been sacked and replaced by the Brains Behind Gerrard. Despite that it seems that during 2023 Rodgers was struggling to cope with the might of the Ibrox machine as they geared up to overtake St Johnstone’s trophy haul of the last dozen years.

It does provide a crumb of comfort to think that Celtic were close to being toppled, that Beale was on the verge of a breakthrough while Proper Manager Clement was on the brink of glory before his bottle crashed away to Ross County following a Moral Victory over Celtic.

The reality of course is that the hyped up players and managers at Ibrox are bang average and ill-equipped to topple the most dominant era in Scottish football history.

McFarlane has had to put a brave face on as Celtic trashed the World’s Most Successful club, move to within touching distance of #title55 and close in on a sixth treble in nine seasons.

Facing upto that sort of grim reality isn’t going to draw in more subscribers, stories of What Might Have Been are more comfortable as loyal bears come to terms with losing to Queens Park while knowing that no-one inside the club is surprised or cares enough to force changes.

19 minutes

The Michael Beale situation where he came in, changed things, bring in his own ideas and it looked like in some ways he was moving forward in that first period.

People kind of forget that, that Michael Beale for his first half season or whatever, it felt like he was moving it on, and with the changes that he was going to make in the summer, there was a lot of positivity and feeling that, Celtic were going to be there for the taking!

And that was actually correct (points finger). Brendan Rodgers coming back, the situation around Postecoglou leaving, Brendan, I don’t think, quite, you know feeling 100% right when he first came back to Celtic, with the slightly uneasy relationship that he had there. And you saw that when Clement came in after Beale was sacked.

Rangers had a real real opportunity and should have won the league. I think that if Rangers had signed a striker that was capable of scoring at a good level rather than Fabio Silva, I think they would have won the league. I really, really do looking back on it.

I think that was the key point. I think that Silva was a good player, he’s shown that this year in La Liga where they think he has been pretty impressive.

There was times where, here, that I thought he did good things, but, and I hate to go over old ground but I think that if they’d gone out and got Lawrence Shankland at that point then Rangers would have been title winners and it would be a very very different conversation than we’re having right now.

Beale took over as manager on 28 November, during the World Cup break. By April 30 he had lost three times to Celtic, twice at Hampden in the League Cup Final and Scottish Cup semi-final where he had Nicky Raskin and Todd Cantwell available, only a complete idiot would have thought that Beale had any managerial ability. Winning a dead-rubber got big Jonny and the other cheerleaders fully on board with excitement mounting as Cyriel Dessers, Sam Lammers, Kieran Dowell, Dujon Sterling and Sam Lammers were signed up for the Beale Revolution!

Jose Cifuentes was billed as the final piece of the jigsaw before three SPFL defeats in their first seven matches brought Beale his severance deal.

So far Rodgers has saw off Mark Warburton, Pedro Caiximha, Graeme Murty and Beale, time is almost up for Clement as he waits his pay-off for failure.

(Photo by Steve Welsh/Getty Images)

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