Brendan Rodgers, as he is prone to pointing out now and again, grew up a Celtic fan.
So, he is well placed to gauge how they may have been feeling as the clock struck 11pm on Monday night, and the transfer window closed without a replacement striker for the departed Kyogo Furuhashi holding up a green and white jersey.
As diplomatic as Rodgers was when addressing that failure of the club’s recruitment function earlier today, you got the sense that deep down, he was as sick about it as anyone else.
But the fact he is also a fan of the club has, along with the benefit of a little time and experience, given him a deeper appreciation of his position, and imbued him with a sense of zen (publicly, anyway) over the situation that he would almost definitely not have exhibited during his first spell in charge of the club.
His stated aim for the last day of the transfer window, reiterated after the win over Motherwell at Fir Park on Sunday, was unambiguous. With a Champions League knockout tie against Bayern Munich looming, and half a season or so still to navigate domestically, he wanted a striker. A permanent signing, a loan, by hook or by crook, that’s what was required.
He isn’t though about to allow the obvious frustration behind his calm veneer to - in his own words - ‘kill his joy’ over the work he gets to do every day. Even if he will be doing that work with one hand tied behind his back somewhat for the rest of the season.
(Image: David Davies - PA) When asked if he could understand the frustration of the fans over the club’s inability to land a striker, Rodgers said: "Yeah, one hundred percent.
“Listen, I said it myself. We want another striker, so we're not hiding behind anything. And absolutely, the supporters will look and see our top striker going out, a legendary striker. And we haven't replaced him.
“So, I understand that. I understand that. But all I can do is affect what we have now and look to teach and work, and work very, very hard and finish off what has been, until now, a great season for us.”
Given that Rodgers previously revealed though that Kyogo’s desire to move on was known internally for months, there are a couple of obvious questions to ask. Firstly, was it not a mistake to let Kyogo leave before signing a replacement?
“Some people will say that, but you don't have the depth of knowledge that I have on the player and working with him and going back to the summer,” he said.
“It's a fair enough thing to say.
“You can very easily say, 'you should really have someone in the door before you let him go'. But there was a situation with that player which meant that wasn't the case. And that was something that had been running for a number of months, not just for the few days before he left.
“So, like I said, I repeat, if a player does not want to be here, then we do the best deal and move on.”
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Fair do's. But that leads one to wonder just what the club’s recruitment team have been doing in the time since Kyogo said he wanted to leave to formulate a contingency plan?
“Listen, I don't want to pin blame on anyone here,” Rodgers replied.
“I think as a collective, it wasn't ideal how it ended for us. So, what we have to, as a club, is now go away and look at that. And like we do every window, that's what you have to do.
“There's so many different facets to the transfer. Obviously, the identification of a player, then convincing the player to come, which in the main is never a problem for here. But no, we just weren't quite able to get a deal done on that front.
“Like I say, it's something that we as a club will go away, we'll review the whole process and then look to be better again in the summer.”
Celtic fans will no doubt be wearily noting that these lessons from previous windows seem to have gone unheeded within the club for years, stretching right back to Rodgers’ first reign as manager and likely long before.
While a new striker was important for the here and now, there is also the small matter of Champions League qualifiers this summer to navigate too.
“I think in terms of that aspect of it, we're all clear,” he said.
“I think I mentioned that before. We're a club that understands that the January window can be really important when you're in the qualification phase.
“That hasn't been the case for a number of years. But certainly in my time here, when we had to go through qualifications, January was an important window in order to prepare ourselves for that moment.
“So I think in terms of that, it's always been the case. I don't think there's anything new that sprung up to surprise anyone.
“We understood what we needed to improve the squads. We're clear on that. Unfortunately, it just didn't happen for us.
“We've done some really good business in the window. Probably one or two, things didn't quite drop for us that we would have liked.But however it ends, you know the squad you have and fundamentally, we're here to develop the players now for the rest of the season that are here.”
Still, for all the calm that Rodgers exudes on the surface, chiefly for the benefit of his players, the age old tensions between his own ambitions for Celtic and the challenge to carry the rest of the club with him are clearly still to be reconciled.
“I know the demands of here,” he said.
“I know the ambition that I have for here. I think what's very, very important is that what you learn through experience is the emotional transfer.
(Image: PA) "Because if you have the hump, with the greatest respect, then as the coach and the leader, my leadership style is very much a motivational style where I like to teach, I like to inspire, and I like to motivate. Now, you've got to be in a good mood for that, in the main.
"With experience, you learn not to kill your joy over things that you can't actually control. We're sat in here now. We can do absolutely nothing about it. So, I go out that door and I've still got the same group of players, which I'm really happy with. Players that tomorrow night if we win our game in hand, we go 13 points clear with 13 games to go.
“We've won a trophy. We're in the playoff stage of the Champions League. We've had a fantastic season until this point. So I don't want to put any clouds over that there, and take a narrative which is negative.
“It can still be a really, really positive season for us. Until this point, it's been outstanding. So, I want to continue with that.
“And like I say, we can then go away and say, what can we do better? How can we deal better with that window? But once we do that, we've got many games to play, and exciting games to play.”
