Latest reports from the Sun suggests that Brendan Rodgers is one of the frontrunners to take up the top job at Aston Villa after Steve Bruce was shown the door from the club. Recent performances and results under Bruce were unsatisfactory, and it almost felt like the sack was around the corner. However, this would be a worrying piece of news up north as Celtic can lose their double treble-winning manager.
The fire to the rumours has been added by the fact that Peter Lawwell (Celtic’s CEO) and Brendan Rodgers don’t share the best of relationship at the moment. The reason for the strain between the two is that the manager is unhappy that the club wasn’t able to land their summer targets.
John McGinn and Scott McKenna were some of few the players the Hoops were interested in, but the club messed about with low bids and Celtic failed to land any of their targets. Incidentally, McGinn now plays for Aston Villa where he was signed for £2.75m.
Rodgers had earlier claimed that he had turned down a big money move to China. We all know going to the Asian country wouldn’t have been the best decision from his career’s point of view so that decision was a no-brainer. However, Aston Villa is a sort of club which can tempt him and the new owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens are keen on an experienced manager who has seen the vigours and test of the Championship.
The northern Irish manager definitely fits that bill as he was the manager in charge when Swansea City got promoted to the Premier League by playing a possession-based football which wasn’t often seen in the Championship at that time.
Rodgers brought a sense of identity to the club, and the Swans did well for few years in the Premier League as well. The Celtic manager by that time had moved on to a much bigger project at the Merseyside club with Liverpool. He might have ended up trophyless there but brought Liverpool extremely close to winning the league.
After that, the way he took over Celtic was fantastic as nobody came close to challenging them in the last two seasons. However, this season the boat has been rocked and a poor transfer period is one of the biggest cause for that. Not only did the club fail to land their targets but lost some key players.
It would be interesting to see what Rodgers would do now as it was always evident that a move to England was what the gaffer worked towards ever since he joined Celtic. Aston Villa are a club with tradition and history and leading them back to the Premier League would take the manager in the folklore of the club. All this is a worrying sign for Celtic, but we expect Rodgers stay at the club until the end of the season.
