Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

He will be concerned with our back up defenders, especially center halfs.

 

Not gonna lie, I physically winced when I saw the lineup confirmed as that back 4. But, I definitely relaxed when I looked at the bench and considered the forward ability.

If we're gonna genuinely compete in 4 trophies this season we'll need to dip into the squad like this, and yesterday was a great lesson in just how deeply we can. It was a necessary evil, both through injury and that Falkirk was a team that allowed us to risk it. The fact that the established players misfired and Falkirk really showed up made it more tense than we'd hoped, but the true quality was almost always going to come through with subs.

If Rodgers says he's taking the blame, fair enough, but for me this was like those fitness tests you take in the gym to show how UNFIT you are as a baseline. A stressful/embarrassing thing, but necessary from time to time

 

The manager has absolutely (for me) any blame that should be aimed at him regarding the starting line up.

If we cannie go up against a side in a division lower than us at Celtic park with a LB from Barca, a £6m signing with EPL experience, a CB who's been here longer than he * shoulf be because he's Scottish and Tony Ralston......well.....ce la vie!

Gaffer spotted it early on and rang the changes fast and furious in the 2nd half when required.

That should be seen as the main positive from the match. I suspect many other gaffers might have persisted longer than that as to save face for their starting selections.

 

Well, yes, but for me the fact that all the subs happened simultaneously at 60mins reeks of the game plan all along... I'm sure that if they'd been flying it and in great form he'd have left them on longer, but I feel he'd always intended to give the squad an hour, and that the wholesale change was because they showed no signs of turning it around.

For me... Should he have changed some out at halftime? Probably. But that would probably have destroyed any confidence those players had, and sown possible discontent in the dressing room. Instead, he gave them a chance to turn it around post the halftime team talk, changed what needed with loads of time to spare, and then took it on his own chin in the presser for the public face of it.

Again, in my opinion, he's done what he had to as a top coach, played the breadth of his squad about as well as he could and now doesn't have any pushback in not doing it again, barring injury/suspension catastrophe. Also allows him to leverage the board about needing more quality so they can't just sit on the 1st teams laurels.

Ultimately, credit to Falkirk for giving us the boot we needed, but the true strength show when we flexed our muscles. Pretty much the score we'd all expected, minus the good goals scored against us, where as much credit goes to Falkirk as blame to ourselves. I'm not * the bed over this, but it is a VERY CLEAR marker on our depth of squad and the fire in their belly (or lack of!) to compete/push us on to better

 

Out with of our first choice starting 11, who can we trust, right now, to come in and perform? Idah, Bernardo would be the only 2 nailed on. Jury still out on the others.

 

Perform where? Domestically? I'd say those 2, Ralston, Forrest.

In Europe? I'd say jury is still out on all of them, and a good few of the 1st team too. We're still far too early to be crowning our achievements just yet

 

I am sure he have pulled Welsh, Palma and a few other bench players to the office and told them to get their act together and work harder than they every have before. If we get injuries, they need to be at least semi decent to not get us into trouble. Lazy *.

 

I agree. We’re getting ahead of ourselves in terms of depth.

There’s hard work needing done on this squad. We’ve got to trade well in the upcoming windows.

If we were a ship then I’d say in the last two windows we’ve stopped leaking water and we’re pointed in the right direction, but now we need to get going and build a more robust squad.

The main reason we should be optimistic is we seem to have addressed the strategic problem from summer 2023 but it’s important not to regress and go back to that spread betting approach.

 

Here's hoping a wide man is too of our priorities in January.

 

Rodgers really needs to force restructuring and reforming our recruitment. We should've be aiming for three markets.

Kuhn, Bernardo and Jota should be an example. We need to tap up the best youth systems around and pick up players who aren't being given a chance there and ones who have moved away from those clubs to get game time and have proved themselves.

O'Riley was just well scouted. We looked at his stats and the man. He was by far the best midfielder in his league and had a huge ceiling. Hidden gems are still to be looked at but we shouldn't be so dependent on these as we will just get more windows like the one we had after Ange left.

The other one is Idah and Engles. We have the money to spend it on one or two top talents a year. This is the market that will take us to the next level.

We must back him and spend serious amounts of cash every window. Our transfers should be the standard from Kuhn signing onwards. Don't regress.

 

Tbf I’d have played a full under 19 squad if it was on fifa and mbappe coming off the bench if it wasn’t going well!

 

We need to be looking at things in a more 'circular' fashion - when we develop a Tierney, O'Reilly or Van Dijk we should automatically give all of the transfer profit from the immediate sale to adding to the squad. Any future sell-on or add-ons can go to the club, as well as returning the initial fee.

Spending more isn't about milking out all the clubs finances, we need that safety margin and credibility, and funds for buying youths and projects still needs to be sourced from somewhere.

The ideal situation would be that for everyone of those £20-25M players we sell we buy 2-3 in the £5-8M area to keep strengthening, rather than weakening. There has to be a point where we say we've cached away enough insurance and can invest better to drive improvement.

 

….And ultimately you can look at each of those 3 £8 million signings making another £20+ million each

 

Spent the whole thing talking about Brown, Levein and Naismith, and then about Cal possibly becoming a manager

Basically the only thing of note he said is that CCV is out for tomorrow and a doubt for Tuesday and I think he said AJ is good to go for tomorrow