Hugh Keevins: It is all in the mind

Brendan Rodgers is a Neuro-linguistic Programming practitioner.

If any other football manager in this country had admitted, as he has done, to being a student of the way the brain responds to stimuli, an approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy discovered by two Californians, Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970's, he would have been openly mocked.

Sports psychology is still dismissed in certain quarters as one of the Dark Arts, never mind Brendan admitting to a five year long interest in developing psychological skills for understanding and influencing people.

But Rodgers has already assembled a catalogue of accomplishments since becoming Celtic manager which suggest he's got inside the heads of several players with remarkable results.

Scott Brown? James Forrest? Both were thought to have run their course at Celtic Park until Rodgers arrived and altered the course of their faltering careers.

Moussa Dembele? A young player introduced to a new country and style of play has been transformed into a talent now being valued at tens of millions of pounds after a matter of weeks.

The manager had even convinced thirteen thousand people he was the right man for the job before a game had been played when he attracted that number of supporters to the club's ground to see him officially welcomed to his post.

That's what you call winning friends and influencing people.

Rodgers' skills will now be put to the ultimate test over the coming days that will see Celtic play Borussia Moenchengladbach in the Champions League and then face Rangers at Hampden in the semi-final of the League Cup.

Remaining calm and having the composure to make coherent decisions when tens of thousands of people resistant to the objectives of neuro-linguistic programming are screaming their heads off would be a sizeable trick to pull off.

But on all known form you'd back Rodgers to succeed.

His ability to approach any situation in a way that is non-hysterical is becoming one of his dominant characteristics.

Rodgers' response to the discovery that a thirteen year old boy, Karamoko Dembele, had been played in an Under 20's match, for instance, was concise, clearly thought out and left no-one in any doubt that the mistake made in his absence would not be repeated.

He disarms those expecting a volcanic reaction to a decision that should not have been taken by remaining calm and delivering a fair, but firm, assessment of what will happen with regard to Dembele junior's progress in future.

If this is what neuro-linguistic programming does for folk then maybe more managers than Brendan should look into it.

The Celtic players buy into what their manager says to them and their progress in the early part of the season verifies as much. But now comes a sequence of European and domestic matches which will be a test of a player's ability to hit peak performance twice in a matter of days.

If Rodgers achieves winning performances in both instances then maybe Gordon Strachan should give him a quick call and ask him how he can get on to the programme before Scotland play England at Wembley in a game that will test the fortitude of a nation.

The messages that Strachan has been putting into the heads of his players are being openly questioned along with his choice of who should play on a match by match basis.

And football's unwritten law is that when a team's successful the players get the praise, but if the same team is struggling then the manager gets the blame.

Rodgers' players have absorbed what he has been telling them and started to look invincible on the home front while recovering from a shattering, seven goal humiliation in Barcelona to restore self esteem on a European basis.

Dembele missed a penalty on that occasion inside the Nou Camp stadium, but his confidence remains unaffected, as was evidenced by his goal from the spot against Motherwell at the weekend.

And when the likes of Kevin de Bruyne, Sergio Aguero and Christian Benteke can all miss penalties on the same day then it once again demonstrates how well Rodgers can manipulate the players in his charge.

Dembele, at the age of twenty, demonstrates the kind of mental strength that is missing from the current Scotland squad. They have developed a disturbing inclination to fall apart at the first sign of adversity and their World Cup qualifying campaign hangs in the balance as a consequence.

It's up to Gordon whether he gives any credence to the idea of neuro-linguistic programming or dismisses it as Californian mumbo-jumbo.

But, in the meantime, his players might try finding a mirror in the dressing room at Wembley on the night of November 11. They could look in it and ask if they are giving enough of themselves while being dismissed as "Limited" at best by those who watch them play.

They have hundreds of caps between them and have never been to the finals of a major competition. Time to deliver better than has been seen so far in that case.

Meanwhile the Rodgers stamp of authority is there for all to see at Celtic Park.

If Celtic can prove that by winning their next two matches it'll vouch for the manager's ability to turn frogs into princes.

And possibly lead to a managerial stampede for the nearest bookshop to see what this NLP lark is all about.