“Celtic Park’s built for a night like that,” Brendan Rodgers tells The Celtic Star

Q: Do you feel that after Dortmund you’ve made people down south eat their words?

Brendan Rodgers: “And up north as well. Don’t worry about that. There was plenty up here too.” (Celtic Star Editor points to the hacks in the room, much to Brendans amusement).

Q: Do you feel like that’s come through in these next two games?

Brendan Rodgers: “Not really, as I said, you’re always going to have critics. Listen, I’ve had that since I started coaching and moved into management. So, it’s not going to change. That won’t change until I retire. Even then, it probably continues. So, it’s mainly about us in here looking to correct and analyse where we can be better. You’re always going to have critics. So, you understand that. And sometimes it will be deserved and sometimes it won’t. But it’s always going to be there. But what’s important is how you deal with that. And I’ve always been one that there’s a way to deal with a setback and try and make sure that didn’t define us. And I think it’s clear to see the spirit in the group, the quality in the group and how they’ve responded to that. Because that takes a lot of courage to do what they’ve done, especially going from Dortmund to Atalanta, who are an absolutely fantastic team, to get that result there. So, I think what we’ve shown is that in this competition this year, that can happen. You can get a doing like that. Sadly, it can happen. It’s happened to them in Madrid. But what we’ve shown is that we can recover and we’re a team that’s always looking to develop and improve. And it’s my job to keep that spirit, to keep that focus to allow us to keep improving.”

Q: You spoke about learning moving into Europe this year, taking what the players have learned in previous competitions and learning from it. In these first four games alone, I know you’re in the here and now and it’s game to game and focused on this competition. But in those four games alone, the learnings must be invaluable for Celtic in the future, in terms of the results, in terms of performances. You’ve had virtually every kind of performance so far in four games alone.

Brendan Rodgers: “Yes, and I think that’s what’s needed at this level. You obviously have a game plan and an idea going into every game and how you want to work, and you want to be true to that. But you know you’re going to have to suffer. Obviously, Bratislava was a great start for us in the competition, really exciting. The second game was obviously a test. I said at the time, all the things that were talked about, what we didn’t do, we never had a chance to. If you look at how we defended against Atalanta and look at how we defended against Leipzig the other night, in terms of real organised pressure on the ball, moments to press it really hard, moments to really rest on your pressure, to go again and then when you had to defend your box, you could do that. I still maintain against Dortmund; we never had the chance to do that. The game very quickly got away from us. We had penalties and worldie goals, so then all of a sudden, naturally, you become a little bit individual. But Tuesday night is also a part of that process, and we came away from that. And again, just reiterated what it is we want to do at that level. At Atalanta, we didn’t quite attack as much as we would have liked, but we showed resilience and bravery and a spirit that was clearly there to keep the clean sheet. So it was then the case of, right, we know we can do it against a top team like Atalanta. We know against Bratislava, we’re at home with our supporters and so we know we have a vibrant, fast, dynamic team. So let’s see, can we pull it together? And Tuesday was the combination of both. So that’s what we want to look to produce on a consistent basis.”

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