Brendan Rodgers Discussion Thread

Brendan Rodgers says his Celtic players aren't robots - but he's not letting them off lightly after being bossed by Rangers.

Rodgers was helpless on the touchline has his side went down 3-0 to their rivals to cut their gap at the top of the division to 11 points. It's a long way from blowing the title race back open, but a first defeat of the season was a reminder to Celtic there is plenty of work yet to be done in their quest to win a fifth Premiership crown on the spin. Goals from Ianis Hagi, Robin Propper and Danilo were the difference at Ibrox. And while a gutted Rodgers wasn't minded to go through his players after a stunning first half of the season, he says their lack of intensity let them down

"This is a little reminder of what it takes to win a game. We didn't control the midfield. Too many slack passes...we gave the ball away too easily. It's one of the games you have to look at. It's not nice but we have to analysis it and do better.



It wasn't a very good performance. We made too many mistakes, especially in the first half on the ball. That invited pressure. We trapped ourselves in too many areas.

"From that, 1-0, it gives the stadium a lift. Rangers were the better team today. It was very unlike us. We were not aggressive enough without the ball. Too many duels lost and moments where they could then break out of pressure. On the ball, it was far too slow.


The game is a disappointment. I'm not sure if the 14-point gap took the edge off, it shouldn't, but maybe subconsciously it can do. We did not play well and Rangers deserved to win.


It was one of those days. They are not robots. The energy in the stadium, they wanted to prove a point, they hadn't beaten us and they are so far behind in the league, so there are many reasons why."

 

Agree with everything he's said here.

 

Yeah, good interview. Takes responsibility while being realistic and not letting his head drop.

 

Aye positive from Brendan in the interview

 

Not replacing Scales and Hatate at HT was as inexcusable as it was baffling. He clearly learned nothing from the cup final where we put ourselves under pressure time and time again, mucking-around and trying to pass about in and around our own box. 6 goals conceded in 2 games against a team of sevco's standard is shocking and that * Danilo must wish he could play us every week. How is it we let the left-footed Cerny cut inside all game long without placing men in the channels where he will clearly be going into? It was the same in the Final, not exactly brain surgery. Yilmaz too. Always going to come inside onto his left but he did it all game long and every time we appeared surprised by it. This Celtic team is fine if the opposition sits off and we're allowed time to play the ball around at our own pace but any team that get's in our face, works hard and fights knocks us off our stride and we don't look comfortable, sometimes even going to pieces as against Dortmund and today. All the sevco cheerleaders will be going into overdrive tonight but basically they won because they wanted it more and put the effort in to achieve it, winning tackles and 2nd balls, pressing and committing men to win the ball back. They ran and fought whilst we walked and didn't want to get our hands dirty. You can't win every game with nicey-nicey football. Rodgers needs to toughen this team up and get them working harder when they don't have the ball. The trouble is I don't think he agrees.

 

Whilst this has been a great season so far, there's 3 games where he's completely got it wrong:
Dortmund, Zagreb and today.

He learned from Dortmund, we've yet to see if he's learned from Zagreb, and there'll be a lot of pressure to see if he learns from today.

It is an unacceptable performance no matter the stakes, we might be 11 points clear still, but winning that would have all but secured the title, even a draw would realistically secure it, I'm not saying the title race is back on, but it needlessly prolongs it.

To play the same way against them, at Ibrox, was suicidal, it is clear Clement had set them to pounce on our mistakes and press our defence, and it worked.

We need a massive performance on Sunday, a massive one.

 

Hopefully good wingers and a reliable striker are now on his shopping list.

 

This...looks like he though the final was a once off. Nope. Got lucky then...handed his * today.

He needs a rethink of shape, personal and formation now.

 

Players are not robots so why not take the ones off that were rotten today,scales and reo should not have been playing 2nd half.....there were others but those two were honking. The team is made up of two parts and when the one part on the pitch is not working that the manager who is the 2nd part has to act and act when needed not 60mins every single game with the same players going off and coming on no matter what is going on. The team lost today but * me BR didnt help matters.

 

Little reminder eh......if only we had got arsed in some final not so long ago eh.

 

Finals are games in isolation though, how many finals have been clean wins?

It's clear in the final we played better than we did today.

 

Aye the 'bigger picture' isn't too bad. 11 points clear and doing well in the CL.

But the downturn in performances, on the whole, since the Leipzig game is quite clearly a concern. Killie had plenty of chances against us and should have been a goal or two up before we scored right before half time. Hibs had 9 shots on target against us at Celtic Park. Draw at Dundee United where we were beyond pish. Hearts away...aye 4-1 in the end is brilliant, but we could easily have been a couple of goals down within 20 minutes.

Recurring theme there with Killie, Hibs and Hearts - they attacked us and we looked panicked and open as * at the back.

In Europe - poor against Brugge at home and fortunate to get a point. Zagreb away, against a half strength team and we offered absolutely nothing when it was as good a chance as we'll have in Europe to win an away game.

Huns in the cup final, we were atrocious. Clement set up to completely nullify our game and it worked. And Rodgers clearly didn't bother attempting to come up with a plan for today because it was the same again and somehow we were even worse.

I mean that today was like a reverse of Rodgers first spell when we were up against the huns with the likes of Kiernan, Waghorn and Senderos. It was as bad as I've seen us play for * knows how long. Could have finished 6-0 and it would have been deserved. Just constantly failing at the absolute basics of the game. And for some reason, Rodgers took 65 minutes to make a change. Utterly baffling.

We struggle when teams come at us. We don't have the players to protect the defence, or the quality in midfield/defence to keep the ball under intense pressure. Not on a consistent basis anyway.

We need a few players this month and another few in the summer.

So aye, the bigger picture looks great from a results and points perspective. But if we're looking at performances, and the way our football is going, it's far from great.

 

He can accept defeat with dignity unlike the detestable * in the opposite dugout.

 

I don't get why people can't see this.

I know you can only beat what's in front of you but there's been warning signs for about 6 weeks now. I'd like our displays to be a little more convincing, a little more emphatic.

I've not seen a truly excellent 90 minutes since Leipzig. That was two months ago.

 

I think expecting the team to be excellent in every game is an unrealistic expectation though.

We're in a period of 2 games a week and despite the drop off in performance to critique the games in spite of generally good results is harsh. This game in isolation then the players and manage come in for deserved criticism but trying to then rewrite the last 2 months despite positive results isn't constructive.

We've been well below a very igh bar that was set in the first few months. Everybody achieved that bar and fell well below it today and deserve criticism for that, but overall the season has been very positive till now.

 

Overseen an absolute mare today but what's that? 2 defeats all season? Still fully expect the huns to continue to bounce up and down and for us to pull away further in the league but it's a sore reminder we have work to do this window. * result losing to those knuckle draggers but it won't determine our season.

 

Sometimes Brendan needs a wee reality check to his massive ego. I love the guy but listening to his press conferences of late he is oozing confidence and rightly so but I think sometimes he gets carried away with it.