Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

I agree we all need to calm down. I think there's a frustration because we were so much better than them last night. We didn't come out of second gear and still looked very comfortable.

I think there's a tiredness creeping into the team both physically and mentally. It felt to me like we lacked the will to push for the win last night because we knew we didn't need it and we have a big game this weekend. I can understand that.

We will need to do a bit of work in January. Not necessarily 'upgrade' the squad's top line, but we need to get a few more players in that can contribute to the workload, especially on the wings.

 

I genuinely think it is more an opportunity cost or what could have been feeling about those last two games. We hit a level for the last hour against Leipzig that we haven’t seen Celtic in Europe hit for a long time.

Arguably we were close to that at home to Atletico last season for the first hour or close to it too but what has been produced since hasn’t lived up to that. Now what is credible though is we haven’t lost either game whereas we would have before but it is hard to shake that feeling.

In addition, the overall results have remained very good but our form has just dipped that bit of late. Our pressing hasn’t been as effective and we haven’t been as dynamic and creative. That games done and it’s the end of January before we pick back up in Europe.

We have three domestic competitors to sort out before then, starting with the first trophy of the year on Sunday. Hopefully the players rest up and are good to go and have that bit extra back about them again. It is actually a decent length of time between the games having played 6 in a little over 2 weeks there.

 

Two things can be true. We can be generally pleased with where we are in Europe this season, but also frustrated with not winning that match given the context of how it played out. Our first shot on target not coming until the 70th minute was particularly poor. Our chance creation was awful.

Given that we're playing three games a week and we're getting close to half way through the season, a little dip isn't surprising, but I still feel we could have performed a lot better last night.