Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

Brendan Rodgers has hailed his Celtic team as "excellent" after a pre-season victory over Portimonense today.

The Hoops finished off a warm-weather training camp with a friendly against the top-tier Portuguese side and the Scottish champions delivered a 4-1 win.

Goals from Oh, Ben Summers, Liel Abada and Reo Hatate secured the victory and now Celtic travel to Japan tomorrow for further pre-season tests.

On the match, Rodgers said: “It was excellent. We have had a fantastic week.


To finish it off with a decent performance and a good result for the guys is pleasing.

“Even though that is not the most important thing at this stage, I was really pleased.

“The heat has been sweltering here, but the intensity and some of the football was very good.

“Still a long way to go but yeah, I am really pleased.

“You can see with some of the goals we scored with our pressing high up the pitch, looking to win it.

“We then took our chances so yeah it was a really good run out.

“Some of the guys, the international ones, it was their first bit of game time.

“Overall it has been a really good week. A tough week for the players and the staff.

“There has been no real time in the schedule for much time off. They have worked really hard in this first part of the tour.”

Rodgers also hailed the youth players in his Hoops squad who have already impressed across pre-season.

He continued: “They have been really good. I think they have stepped up.

“Some of them in particular I have been really impressed with.

“For a young player at this stage you always look at the attitude and energy most of the young guys who have come in have got that.

“I have been really pleased with them.”

Looking ahead to the tour of Japan, Rodgers added: “It is a tough schedule over the two weeks here with the heat and it will be a similar heat in Japan with the humidity.

The teams we are playing out there are half way through their season so it will be a step up again and a challenge for us.

“That is what we want as you need that challenge at this point in the season to improve our fitness level.

“We will get back tonight, recover and then head to Japan tomorrow and I am really looking forward to it.”

 

No after match presser?

 

I'm not panicking regarding signings. Why? Because I'm sure that after his last stint here, Brendan agreed to come only if certain things in the contract were stipulated. I bet he can leave in September without any strings attached if the board fail to deliver what he wants.

 

Heard he’s resigned

 

Ten goals over 90 minutes certainly gave the fans inside the Nissan Stadium plenty to be excited about, as Celtic kicked off their two-game tour of Japan with a 6-4 defeat to Yokohama F. Marinos.

It was always going to be a challenging contest against the J. League champions who are also mid-way through their league campaign, but it was also an important test to see where the players' fitness levels are ahead of the SPFL season.

Assessing the game, Brendan Rodgers believes it was beneficial for the players, with plenty of positives to reflect on.

Speaking to Celtic TV, the Celtic manager said: “It was a tough schedule for us in terms of arriving here so quickly. This is a good team and they are pretty much three-quarters of the way through their season.

“It was perfect for what we needed with the fitness levels we need to be at, and there’s still a lot of work to do on that front. We played two behind closed doors and each game is a step-up in performance levels.

“We can’t lose track of the priority at this stage. You can never go on results and we need to build that fitness and you can see Yokohama were that bit sharper.

'We will get to that point but we have to focus on our physicality and that will improve over the coming weeks. The main priority was our fitness and we will have benefited tonight.'

“You can see whenever it works well, some of the patterns in penetrating the space in behind to attract opponents out and then counter them with the ball, they did that very well.

“In other moments we were maybe hesitant with the ball and maybe didn’t get our pass away quick enough.

“That’s what pre-season is for. It’s for flushing out all of those mistakes and building your fitness up, and we can build through that over the course of pre-season.”




The match at the Nissan Stadium was a chance for Daizen Maeda and Tomoki Iwata to return to their former club.

Both players received applause from the fans at the end of the game and they put in stellar performances to earn the praise, with Tomoki setting up Daizen for one of his three first-half goals.

Speaking on their performances, the manager said: “I thought Daizen was outstanding in the game in his running, his touch and his finishing. He was absolutely outstanding, so I’m really pleased for him. He was amazing in all aspects. I was impressed from afar but he was very good.

“Also, from Tomoki as well I thought he was excellent. Playing in right-back, a position he hasn’t played too much, I thought he played really well.

'Overall for the two boys, I was pleased for them to come back to their home country and get a lovely reception from the supporters.'

The Celts now travel to Osaka for the final leg of their tour of Japan, when they take on Gamba Osaka on Saturday. Having put the team through some intense work in Yokohama, the manager says he is likely to change things about for the next pre-season friendly.

“We wanted to really push a number of players tonight,” he said. “So by the time they were coming off at 65 minutes you could see the tiredness in the legs.

“We needed to get them through that and come the weekend we will go back to two 45 minutes because of the heat and everything else.

“That will allow us to get back to a good place physically after this trip in the following weeks. There’s a lot of work for us to do, enjoyable work, but we look forward to the next challenge.

 

Brendan Rodgers insists there’s no pre-season panic despite his creaky Celtic shipping six goals in Yokohama.

The Hoops boss admitted his undercooked stars suffered in the searing heat in Japan in the 10-goal thriller against local cracks F Marinos. Daizen Maeda blasted a stunning first half hat-trick but the hosts came out on top 6-4 in a chaotic pre-season dust-up. Rodgers insisted he’s not worried about some of the dodgy defending – and admitted it was hard going after hopping time zones and then running into a side in the middle of their league campaign in blistering 30 degree temperatures.

The Parkhead boss said: “If we won 5-0 it wouldn’t have mattered either. The priority is getting the players ready for when it matters. It’s quite a hard ask for the players to arrive late on the Monday, adapt to the time and then play in that heat against a very good team who are well into the season. We had some very good moments in the game and scored some good goals.

“We gave away poor goals I wouldn’t expect us to be losing later on in pre-season. It’s still a period we are developing the structure and the fitness. It was a really good exercise for us. It was always going to be a challenge, firstly from a physical perspective.”

The Celtic backline were guilty of some calamitous defending against the J League challengers – and keeper Joe Hart was to blame for gifting Marinos an early opener. Rodgers refused to hammer the shot stopper – but also stopped short of giving any assurances the former England star would be his no.1 this season.

There have been questions surrounding Hart’s place with Celts linked with several keepers in the last couple of weeks. And Rodgers insisted he’s still to make his mind up over a number of positions.

He said: “It’s a period of the season where we’re only a few weeks in and assessing where we’re at. We could have been better for the first goal before it got to Joe 25 yards out and there’s a player turning within our organisation. But we made a number of mistakes for the goals that we gave away. “I’m assessing everything at the moment.”

Rodgers was unhappy with some of his side’s defending – but he was thrilled with his attackers and Maeda in particular. The frontman stole the show against his former side with a brilliant treble after being handed a start through the middle with Kyogo coming back from shoulder trouble.

Rodgers said: “I thought Maeda was exceptional in his performance. It was everything you’d want in a striker, running, movement and pressing. t was a brilliant performance and I’m very happy for him to come back and play so well. He scored three and maybe could have had one or two more.”

Rodgers is looking for his side to step up this weekend against Gamba Osaka – but he is also working in the background to bring in new recruits. Korean duo Yang Hyun-jun and Kwon Hyeok-kyu are expected to be finalised in the coming days.

But Rodgers rubbished links with Gremio winger Ferreira in Brazil and Egyptian prospect Mohamed Reda. Rodgers said: “I don’t even know them to be honest.”

 

The time difference and the effects of jet lag are valid and something I haven't seen any fan take into consideration thus far.

 

Still can’t look at him without anger. His coming back can only be good for us as with his ego he’ll have got some guarantees about investment for a better shot at Europe especially after some of our previous defeats in Europe under him, honestly still scarred by some of the games at Parkhead, especially the psg humiliation (I was also lucky to bump into a coach load of psg fans at motorway service on way back to leeds, that was fun). we don’t have to love or even like people employed by Celtic as long as they’re doing a good job, * we put up with actual hun kenny miller playing for us

 

We need to see more of this. Showcase him doing what he's world class at instead of asking him questions that aren't really relevant to how Celtic go forward. The former will have us (or at least me) eating out of his hand and the latter leads to weird stuff like "Yoto".

 

Don’t show the opposition too much

 

Brendan in the record, below is what he actually said so no need to give the record clicks.
It’s like he’s deliberately lowering expectations, even mentioning a ‘warchest’, it’ll be biscuit tin next

“For me on a personal level the club has a model it works to and I’ll work within that. But there seemed to be a different narrative about me coming back here.

It felt like it was people who don’t know me were creating a story around ‘why would he come back?’ It was like ‘he must be doing it because of the war chest he’s being given.’

It does make me laugh when I read it. But it’s one where I will work within the model of the club and the club has a business model which has been really successful.
We will look for players who are first-team ready. But we’ll also look at players who we can bring in and develop and move on. That’s the nature of it.

Look, there are levels to it all. You could bring in a player at any cost because if he’s a good player he’ll have value. That’s what we want but I’m not, in any way at all, demanding that we need to sign three players at £10m or £15m. That’s not the case


But Brendan players first team ready that’ll cope with champions league level will cost around £7-13m each.
I live in hope

 

I don't think he's playing down expectations in that record article.. literally wouldn't put a number on the amount of signings we need, stated openly we need first team quality and significant strengthening to improve depth in the squad.

Can't really ask for anymore.

 

I think it depends on how much confidence you have in BR and club, and indeed what type of person you are.

As a glass half empty type of guy, the "interview" is extremely worrying".

Put it this way. If the Hun manager came out and claimed he'd been promised no warchest, and starting bigging up Ben Davies (ie. One of their WORST Cb's), we'd be laughing our * off and calling them skint.

Now, we are FAR from skint. We've spent the guts of 10m euro already. But there are PLENTY of red flags in that interview for me.

His first team ready patter could easily apply to Tillio, Holm, Jun etc. Are they not spl level players? Can they not start a domestic fixture? We wouldn'tve of signed them if they weren't.

Also this praising of Welsh scares the * * out if me. Welsh is nowhere NEAR this so called level of development Rodgers is alluding to, or indeed any level we should be deeming competent to start in our back line. Harsh, but it's the truth.


That being said, I was against BRs appointment. I said I wouldn't listen to his * and judge him on results at the end of seasons. Especially season 2.
So I'm trying to take everything he says with a pinch of salt.

 

He mentions those who have signed thus far (Holm, Tilio) are projects who will make a impact further down the road.. that we've yet to add that first team quality and he hopes to do so in the coming weeks.

I'm less worried about Welsh as ultimately he's not going to get much gametime with the addition of Nawrocki.