Wily Brendan Rodgers must use his contract situation to make sure the Celtic board help him fulfil Munich promise, writes GARY KEOWN

Brendan Rodgers is wise to keep the issue of a new contract hanging in the air for now. In the great game of trying to convince the Celtic board to spend as much as they can on new players, he holds all the aces.

And that whole business about a fresh deal to keep him beyond the end of next season has the potential to become an important form of leverage – because if the week just gone showed one thing, it’s that the champions cannot make the mistake again of resting on their laurels.

Or, rather, sitting on the £65.4million cash-in-the-bank confirmed by the interim results released earlier in the month.

Rodgers’ primary concern, of course, is Europe. Reports from his media briefing on Friday carried headlines about him being open to discussing new terms and conditions when the time is right, although the actual quotes didn’t appear to go quite so far.

What they did make crystal-clear, though, is that the manager does not want to see his side’s heroic Champions League exit in Munich – losing 3-2 on aggregate thanks to a jammy, last-gasp goal from home sub Alphonso Davies – going down as some kind of high point of his second spell in charge. He wants it to be a springboard.

‘We can certainly get to the next stage,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason why, if you can qualify out of these group stages and perform like we did, you can’t then move on to a last-16 or a quarter-final.’

Rodgers was left without a replacement for forward Kyogo Furuhashi, who left for Rennes

There were some additional remarks about him being happy at the club, but he’s always said that. In terms of penning a new contract, he went no further than saying it will all be about what’s best for Celtic.

When conducting an interview with former Parkhead manager Martin O’Neill for Amazon Prime just last week, though, he went back to a previously-utilised standpoint of hinting that a second three-year spell at the helm might just feel like it’s enough. And it might just be, unless he is sure those above him in the powerbase want to go exactly where he does.

‘I drive up here (to the Lennoxtown training complex) every morning and it is still an amazing feeling,’ he said. ‘At the end of my contract next year, I’ll be here nearly six years, which is a long time. But I feel fresh and the players allow you to feel that.’

Chief executive Michael Nicholson and his fellow directors will also have to contribute to maintaining that overall sense of vigour and wellbeing, however. And if Rodgers wants to put the squeeze on Nicholson and Co ahead of the transfer market reopening in the summer, he’d be well advised to leave that whole contract issue fluttering in the wind for a good while yet.

As financially strong as Celtic are, there was deep unhappiness over the way the January window panned out. It had been known for the best part of a year that Kyogo Furuhashi wanted to leave, with the £10m fee offered by Rennes proving an exceptional piece of business for a 30-year-old with a recurrent shoulder problem.

The problem was that Nicholson and the recruitment team couldn’t bring in a replacement ahead of the club’s biggest European match in years. It felt like the upper echelons of the club had just written off the Bayern Munich encounter as a lost cause.

And, yet, who knows what might have happened had there been another clinical striker on the bench with the side a goal-up in the Allianz Arena and pushing for a crucial second in the closing stages?

Celtic did go large last summer in spending an estimated £25m on the fees for Arne Engels, Adam Idah and Auston Trusty – even if that was largely offset by Matt O’Riley’s move to Brighton.

Rodgers will be keen for Celtic CEO Michael Nicholson to be ambitious in the transfer market

And it easy to see why the board might question the worth of forking out even more when there are no guarantees in the elite arena of the Champions League. At the level at which Celtic operate, seven-figure transfers have to work out. Even if you doubled your wage bill, you could still draw a side in the knockout play-offs that it’s hard to lay a glove on.

The directors could make a compelling argument for keeping budgets – and expectations – very much in check. Playing the percentages.

However, hard on the heels of Rodgers masterminding a performance in Munich that has surely earned him the right to be given a proper crack at building a team to go further in the competition and properly re-establish the club’s reputation at that level, an even bigger surprise has arrived from stage left to strengthen his hand.

Where it looked like future domestic domination was a fait accompli against a Rangers set-up with a jaded investor base that had lost all direction and momentum, there now exists the prospect of reinvigorated rivals under the control of an impressive-looking US consortium containing input and investment from the financial arm of the San Francisco 49ers.

Even if the buy-out goes through before the end of the season, it remains to be seen how much money there will be in the coffers at Ibrox for the summer market. The rebuilding job across the city of Glasgow is a big one and it is likely to take time.

However, the picture which existed until last week, of Celtic having the unhindered run of the place in Scottish football, has changed considerably. The individuals getting involved at Rangers give the impression of knowing what they are doing. Change is likely to be swift and merciless. Nothing personal. Strictly business.

And that should make sure everyone at Celtic remains on their toes. Questioning the worth of spending and reinvesting heavily when you might still get no further in the Champions League is one thing.

There is no discussion to be had, though, over the importance of continuing to make sure you win the Premiership title and give yourself the best chance possible of making it into the league stage of European football’s premier club competition.

Celtic chairman Peter Lawwell should be looking to invest the money necessary into the club

This time last year, Celtic chairman Peter Lawwell, reacting to another underwhelming January window, stated that the Parkhead board recognise ‘the inherent inefficiencies of holding excess cash, and, in conjunction with other cash commitments, the importance of investing in strengthening the team to deliver football success.’

With those dollar bills rolling into Ibrox throwing everything up in the air and the Celtic fanbase now 100-per-cent behind the vision of a manager who has shown them that Europe can be more than just a method of keeping the bank balance topped up, those remarks are arguably more relevant now than they were then.

Rodgers will hope he doesn’t have to put a gun to the head of Nicholson and the suits to guarantee the kind of expenditure needed to make sure Celtic don’t stand still amid new challenges at home and abroad, but he knows, from old, what the attitude towards speculating to accumulate can be inside Parkhead.

He already has the ear of major shareholder Dermot Desmond, of course, but holding off on the contract talks until he knows the lie of the land might just add to the power he wields.

Walking away at the end of a contract would be more ‘toodle-oo’ than ‘terminado’, for sure, but the threat of that remains a powerful weapon to have up the sleeve as he tests just how serious Celtic are about taking things to the next level.

Conference line-up is an eyesore to Hearts and Co

Glance through the last 16 of the UEFA Conference League and you’ll see that it’s a veritable ‘Who’s That?’ of European football.

Borac Banja Luka, Pafos, Celje, Lugano, Molde, Vitoria, Jagiellonia Bialystok, Djurgarden. They’re all there.

Look back at some of the outfits who were in the knockout play-off round and you’ll find TSC Backa Topola, Viking, Omonia, Olympija Ljubljana and Shamrock Rovers. On this basis, you could pull 11 folk from round the bar in the Dog and Calculator at lunchtime on any given Saturday and harbour realistic hopes of having a run in the competition.

Hearts’ home draw with Moldova’s Petrocub led to their meek exit from the UEFA Conference

Which is why it is all the more embarrassing that we’re another year into this affair and there is still no sign of any team from Scotland even close to these latter stages.

Let’s be honest, there’s no way to make Hearts’ failure to beat Petrocub – from that rich footballing culture of Moldova, in case you had forgotten – in their final group game earlier this season look or feel any worse than it was at the time.

It was an utter scandal then and remains a scandal now.

The Tynecastle club – plus others such as Aberdeen and Hibs, in particular – really need to start getting their acts together on this front.

Coefficient points that would help the national cause would be a useful spin-off, of course. But, first and foremost, there is serious money to be made in the Conference League and the Europa.

And all three of those clubs are running overall wage bills which would suggest that, if the flotsam and jetsam mentioned earlier can still be coining it in and competing for silverware with spring on the horizon, they should be in there too. 

Subscribers to TNT were perplexed to see Celtic v Bayern appearing on Amazon Prime

Expensive TV subs driving fans to piracy

Surely my household wasn’t the only one left feeling robbed on Tuesday evening when turning on TNT Sports and discovering the Bayern Munich v Celtic match was nowhere to be seen on the schedules.

We pay over 30 bangers for a month to watch the Champions League there, right? When they bought the rights and appeared on the scene, they sold themselves as the one-stop shop for all the games.

There’s still a page on their website, published on April 18 of last year, stating that ‘you can watch every UEFA Champions League match – from the group stage to the final – on TNT Sports’.

Only you can’t. Not any more. Amazon Prime Video have turned up and can show any old game they fancy on a Tuesday, so, if that just so happens to feature your team, you’d better be ready to pay through the nose again.

With Sky Sports and Premier Sports also showing Scottish football, it’s at the stage where you need the GDP of a small country in disposable income to keep an eye on all the live action.

Football, in general, throws its arms up in horror at piracy. It is a huge problem for the sport. But when you are looking at the guts of £125-a-month to watch all the games relating to Scottish clubs legally, is it any wonder more and more folk are turning to Firestick Dave on WhatsApp for their subscription telly?