CLARITY BEGINS AT HOME

Rieper reckons best business Hoops can do is re-signing Bren to end uncertainty

- BY FRASER WILSON

MARC RIEPER knows only too well the dressing-room disruption that can be caused by a manager leaving amid a period of success.

The Dane has been both a beneficiary and a victim of much-loved gaffers cutting ties with clubs unexpectedly - and with drastic consequences.

That's why the former Celtic defender reckons the best bit of business the Hoops could do this summer would be to tie down Brendan Rodgers beyond the end of his deal in 12 months' time.

Rodgers will sit down with Parkhead supremo Dermot Desmond in coming weeks and pore over a wide range of topics ahead of the new season.

And chief among them is his own situation as he enters the third and final year of his deal.

It may be a while off but uncertainty over what happens beyond next May is already reverberating through the fanbase. The longer the issue drags on the more it threatens to become an unwelcome sideshow.

Rieper knows that can never be allowed to filter into the dressing-room.

He felt both sides of it not long after being signed by Celtic from West Ham by Wim Jansen in 1997.

Midway through that first season and with Rangers chasing 10-in-a-row, the Ibrox club announced manager Walter Smith would be leaving at the end of the season.

Not only did the Ibrox juggernaut hit the skids as Rangers blew their chance of history, they ended the season empty handed as Jansen's Celts stormed to one of the most important titles in Parkhead history.