I'd be amazed if Brendan Rodgers is Celtic manager next season and three Rs are the reasons why – Hugh Keevins

I would be amazed if Brendan Rodgers is still Celtic’s manager at the start of next season, whether or not he wins the league title in May.

The baiting of Brendan made for an uncomfortable listen and watch over the past week. Resentment, rejection and retribution, the manager has had to face all of those negative reactions in the space of days. There must have been moments during the public fall-out from Rodgers’ verbal exchange with BBC reporter Jane Lewis on Sunday when he wondered what had come over him in June at his home in Spain.

That day when he abandoned his original plan to take a year-long sabbatical and instead accepted Dermot Desmond’s offer of a return to Celtic Park. Brendan’s press conference on Tuesday, when he explained himself after the post-match interview with Lewis at Fir Park, was strongly reminiscent of the first one he gave as returning Celtic manager in July. I wrote here at the time that Rodgers appeared to be being interviewed under caution. Tuesday’s questioning before the Dundee match was another example of interrogation dressed up as an interview.

The night before, BBC Scotland’s prime-time news broadcast The Nine unearthed a professor of linguistics to offer an academic’s opinion on someone saying “good girl” to a female television journalist. The professor concluded that Rodgers’ words had been “ill thought out” and that words, when misused, were “as bad as violence”.

At that juncture, the case of Lewis versus Rodgers came in need of a judicial review. A verbal mis-step by the manager? No argument.

Violence? Why take the conversation in that direction to the detriment of his character? Brendan has, of course, been the victim of battery by words from some of the Celtic support. He was