Rangers noise doesn't matter because Celtic are looking UP rather than down at their 'irrelevant' rivals – Chris Sutton
Brendan Rodgers has done a magnificent job in restoring Celtic’s credibility in the Champions League.
Now the club simply must ensure this progress isn’t wasted. Rodgers has been as good as his word in terms of restoring the club’s pride on the continent and he wants to keep progressing, so give him every opportunity.
To come this far and then stall would be criminal. It just can’t happen, so I trust work is already going on feverishly behind the scenes on his behalf right now. It’s been intriguing to gauge the noise around the potential investment which may arrive into Rangers from American sources. Cash injections into Ibrox might be important for them, but, to be brutally honest, from a Celtic point of view, it’s irrelevant.
Right now, my old club are looking up the way in terms of pushing on in Europe as opposed to peering down below them at rivals in Scotland. When it comes to investment, the only one that counts at Celtic is their own and focus on that has surely strengthened by the progress in this season’s Champions League.
Look, I’m not one who wallows in glorious failure. That type of sycophantic guff usually has me hunting for a sick bag. But I didn’t actually see Celtic’s Champions League exit in Munich as a failure.
Eliminated, yes. But, when it comes to their status amongst the elite of Europe and a vision of what could happen in their own future, the Allianz Arena has to be viewed as another big step forward.
Rodgers came back for this. The fans craved this. To go up against one of Europe’s big guns and stand toe-to-toe with them in knockouts.
It’s not so long ago Celtic couldn’t win a game in the Champions League. They lost four out of six last season and, despite Rodgers’ claims to the contrary, I didn’t see much progress.
However, this term, it’s staring you in the face. In 10 games in the competition, Celtic lost just three. They took points on the road when, in the past, they were just lucky to escape without a hiding.
Fortress Parkhead had become a soft play for opposition. It was as fearful as a bouncy castle, yet that has all been changed, too. The Bayern defeat in the first leg was a first home reverse in seven. This is progress. Real progress.
From seven goals in Dortmund to a resolute show down the AutoBahn in Bavaria, it’s night and day and it cannot be frittered away by standing still and soaking up pats on the back.
Listen, winning the title is of utmost importance for obvious reasons, but, with Rodgers close to that feat again, circles must already be around the qualifiers in the summer.
Can you imagine making this progress and then not having the opportunity to build on it again by losing out in those shoot-outs? It’s not an option and the wheels simply have to be turning now in the background.
The recruitment staff and money men have to be securing the striker they didn’t get in January when Kyogo Furuhashi left. Rodgers could really have done with a new goalscorer bedded into the squad through the remainder of this season with next term’s qualifiers in mind, but that’s not going to happen now.
If current stars are being earmarked for sales, the replacements need to be ready to go as soon as the window opens in the summer because Celtic don’t have the time to be messing around in the market.
Rodgers knows the movie. He’s been through these qualifiers. Patching teams together to scrape through in his first spell before there were just too many fences to mend and he lost out to AEK Athens.
Celtic’s board have backed him. Big fees have been paid out for the likes of Arne Engels and Adam Idah and a big contract will be earmarked for Kieran Tierney, I’m sure. But the justification for spending the cash screamed at you in Munich. If you pay for top players, that’s what you’ll get.
I don’t want to get onto Greg Taylor’s case because I’m a fan of his, but you can’t hide from the difference in the way he dealt with Michael Olise in the first leg and the way Jeffrey Schlupp dealt with the winger in the second.
I said in this column last week that Celtic looked scared for an hour of the first leg. Within a week, they had learned that lesson and took the game straight to Bayern.
The manager has got it, and if he’s given backing to get the players, it seems like he’ll get them, too. So don’t stop now. Standing still is going backwards.
Rodgers’ bench wasn’t strong enough to sustain the team’s push in the last 20 minutes in Munich. They fell out of it and that’s a quality gap which the manager wants to fill. If the club wants to go forward, he must get the funds to do so.
The Celtic manager has proven he can adapt to get results in Europe, the board have shown they can act to back him up. But, if you want to take the next step, you have to be prepared to take the next bold moves.
Surely, given the advances made this season, that is going to happen. Because wasting a season of superb progression and missing out on a shot at more nights like Munich would be a horrendous waste of the great work done to this point.
