Backslapping Celtic board need self awareness as cute Brendan Rodgers comments show who's really driving the process

There will have been an outburst of backslapping in the Celtic boardroom this week with the Slovan Bratislava bashing a couple of days after announcing bumper financial results.

The Hoops are off to a Champions League flier, unbeaten in the league and set for a crack at the last four of the Premier Sports Cup. It all looks so rosy in the garden the only danger on the horizon is getting hay fever. But the Celtic Park suits shouldn’t be stopping to smell the flowers. They sit pretty right now – but it’s been a thorny path to get here. And for all the high-fiving going on, there should be the self-awareness to accept lessons must be learned.

The board might be feeling pretty chuffed, especially when Brendan Rodgers said on Friday the club had been vindicated its strategy. But it was a cute way of phrasing it. The manager is the one who has been vindicated. It’s Rodgers who wanted the streamlined recruitment process of buying a couple of £10m players rather than scattering £20m on 10 new faces and hoping one or two came good.

It’s only a few weeks since the manager admitted there were issues in the recruitment department that need addressing. A solid final week of the window doesn’t change that. Rodgers rightly hailed the recruitment team for unearthing Arne Engels. But it took until the final days of the window to secure him and the rest of recruitment was pretty much on the boss.

He’s the one who got on the blower to land Kasper Schmeichel. He liked the look of Luke McCowan and jumped when the chance arose. Before then, Rodgers was the man who wanted Adam Idah – who could have been snapped up for far less dosh if the board hadn’t baulked at the fee back in January.

Rodgers has driven the process since the woeful first