I'm convinced Brendan Rodgers made a big mistake by berating Celtic board with unheard of mocking – Hugh Keevins

Brendan Rodgers made a big mistake when he berated the Celtic board and chief executive Michael Nicholson last weekend.

After his team had battered St Mirren from pillar to post last Sunday, the manager carried out the same function on his employers. The first Celtic manager I ever interviewed for newspaper purposes was also the greatest of them all – Jock Stein. In the 54 years that have elapsed since then I have never heard any of the big man’s successors publicly mock the way the club is run like Rodgers did in his dismay over the dithering during the transfer window.

His mistake was that if Brendan had made a full disclosure of how he was feeling a couple of weeks earlier he would have had Arne Engels and Auston Trusty in his team to face Rangers at Celtic Park today instead of watching the game from the stand. When he spoke about the time it took to get anything done at administrative level, Rodgers appeared to have concluded that those in authority needed coercion and not cooperation.

Having obviously arrived at the realisation that limited ambition will get you limited achievement, domestically as well as in Europe. When Kyogo Furuhashi damaged his shoulder against Hibs at Easter Road last month Celtic suddenly ended months of trying to turn Adam Idah’s loan move from Norwich City into a permanent transfer – and paid over the odds to get him before there was a backlash.

Likewise, when Matt O’Riley left Celtic for Brighton and brought in record-breaking money, deals were done for Engels and Trusty before the fan base did a Rodgers and openly questioned what was going on behind the scenes. All of that has to be as a consequence of the manager delivering what could hardly have been called a ringing endorsement