Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

He could recruit well and probably still not win at Rugby Park and Easter Road. Once he's got a bogey team he seems incapable of overcoming it.

 

The excuses about lack of quality won’t work for him now. Especially against Killie when our captain is probably on more than their entire starting 11.

I think we’ve all seen enough football to see that nothing is going to magically change. Not a bad run it’s just not been right since the first game. Pre season is when he starting moving Kyogo about and it’s never been right since. Was a vital player the last 2 season but Rodgers decided to change him.

 

I’m not a massive fan of Rodgers so I don’t disagree but it’s difficult to blame the manager when he’s forced to play a 21 year old South Korean kid with zero experience and a contingent of players that we all agreed weren’t good enough 3 seasons ago.

Even our worst team in the 90s should beat that Kilmarnock team but the reality of league football is matches aren’t played in isolation and you need a quality squad to perform well in every game. We don’t have that, because we ignored the problems we had an tried to buy prospects to drive profits.

 

Is there any proof of these claims? Even if it were true, we should never be making assurances for EPL rejects who have done nothing in their career to the detriment of our own players' development.

We're talking about Nat * Phillips here. Hardly a player who was high in demand. He's played roughly 15 full games per season in the last 4 years.

Here's a guy seemingly happy to play a couple of games here and there every season and sit on the bench for the rest of it. But all of a sudden there's assurances to be made that he MUST get minutes if he wants to play here for 4 months?

Aye, I don't buy it.

 

Have you seriously any confidence in anyone coming in under Rodgers ?

 

See I don't why people don't understand this. Our squad is still infinitely better than everyone else's, even the huns. Yet we're trying to justify why we can't play even semi decent football against some of the poorest teams in a footballing backwater.

 

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers admitted his side were too negative in their passing in the second half at Rugby Park after Kilmarnock came from behind to win 2-1.

Matt O’Riley netted from close range to earn Celtic a deserved half-time lead but Killie had missed two excellent chances and they created plenty more opportunities after the interval.

They were eventually rewarded when Nat Phillips converted Brad Lyons’ cross into his own net in the 75th minute and the home side took further confidence before Matty Kennedy finished off a counter-attack with three minutes left.

Rodgers said: “I thought in the first half we were very good. We played at a good speed and created opportunities. We could have maybe have been more than 1-0 up by half-time.

“But in the second half we never got started. You expect a wee bit of pressure for 10 or 15 minutes, which we weathered at set-pieces and corners. But we never passed the ball.

“We were under a bit more pressure, sure, but you have to be resistant to that pressure. We weren’t able to make passes to take us up the pitch and that was the biggest disappointment of the second half. We couldn’t sustain any attacking threat in the game.

“When you play Kilmarnock it’s quite a direct game so you have to be able to win the first, second and third balls. But we didn’t do that.”

Rodgers was angrier than he had ever been as a manager when his side trailed against St Johnstone at half-time seven days earlier before coming back to win. But he was more measured in his response after a first cinch Premiership defeat of the season




“The players know themselves,” Rodgers said. “We spoke after the game about how this isn’t how we want to do.

“In the second half we played their game instead of playing our game. I thought we got rid of the ball in the second half instead of passing it. And there is a big difference.

“We ended up being too negative in our passing. If you play a team that’s pressing and right up against you there, you’ve got to pass the ball forward. Because that forward pass eliminates pressure. And we weren’t able, for some reason, to do that.”

Rodgers has now lost 10 domestic games over two spells as Celtic manager and four of them have been at Rugby Park.

“I thought the pitch was all right for an AstroTurf surface,” he said. “When you get rain, it makes it slick, and it was actually good, but in the British game you have to have that adaptability.”

 

What worries me is that we have no real identity/playing style, that none of our players are playing close to their capabilities and that Kyogo has went right off the boil and he has no idea how to get the best from him.

 

We do have a better squad and that’s why we are top. We had the best squad under Strachan as well and won leagues and made the last 16 of the CL twice. The football was dire though. Our squad right now is poor, especially with the injuries we have.

 

Every player bar O’Reilly have regressed this year from last years starting 11 and only one major thing changed during the summer.

 

Aye, but we'll definitely be stronger when they return..

 

Like I said, it doesn’t matter if you buy it.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/spo...erpool-insisting-playing-clause-loan-11641458

 

Second half we were never at the races. Too slow to everything and we got bullied. A simple long ball from back to front and we couldn’t cope with it. I actually thought we were really good first half. So to go from that to the utter * we were served up second half is a major worry in my opinion. The hard work in the first round of fixtures is almost all undone now.

 

Strachans football wasnt dire. He gave us a lot of very good european nights - man utd, Shakthar, AC Milan, Benfica. We went toe to toe with them and we were able to because we were a strong defensive unit.

Now we are miles off it.

 

We've lost one game in the league and still top..

The comparisons with Lennon and Mowbray simply can't be made at this time ffs..

We haven’t been great but calls for his head are vastly premature..

 

It’s not just today though tbf. We’ve had five performances that were good, that I can remember. A large part of that is on Rodgers.

 

We have very few real characters in that side. Wouldnt count on most of them when the going gets tough.

A big thing about recruitment is also the characters we are bringing in. I actually felt for McGregor today because you could see the midfield begin to get overrun in the second half and we dont have the doggedness to fight back. CCV is a huge miss for us.

A few seasons ago we had Tierney, Brown and McGregor who wasnt as influential as he is now.

We need to add quality but we also need to add leaders.

 

Rudderless sums us up.

I dont know what our style of play is meant to be.

 

He's struggling big time to get any sort of momentum going. The players we have are more than good enough to go on a run of good performances and results but it's just not happening at the minute.

Not losing my mind about it just yet but it's getting harder and harder to defend him as the weeks roll on with this hot and cold form. He needs to figure it out sharpish or the destructive element within the support are goanny overwhem things to the point his job is under severe pressure.

Think this season is gonna be touch and go all the way but in the mean time he will need to be absolutely perfect in working out a better system, identifying quality to play within that and making sure the club prioritise that over the next two windows.

Starting to get worried though I have to admit, we cannot allow the league title to be lost this year.