“There’s absolutely no doubt, this feels like the most ready I’ve been as a Celtic manager coming into a Champions League campaign,” Brendan Rodgers said at yesterday’s media conference at Celtic Park which was attended by Celtic Shorts…
The Celtic manager was on great form and looking forward to the Champions League opener this evening against Slovan Bratislava at a sold-out Celtic Park. And this time around is much different than when he first experienced Champions League football with Celtic back in 2016. Even last season had its challenges but this time around the Celtic manager reckons that he’s fully prepared.
“Having had a year under my belt”
“Naturally because of the qualification phase and the doubt around all of that and trying to get players in later on on the back of that.
“Last season coming in, trying to find out about players and managing them through that and then seeing them in the competition. But having had a year under my belt back here and seeing all the players and being able to improve a lot of the areas that I want, there’s still areas that we want to improve in, but certainly the readiness is a great word.
“That feeling of arriving at this first game will be the best place that probably I’ve been in since I’ve been here.”
On the pressure that playing in Europe’s elite club competition brings, Rodgers dismisses that as a cause for concern, stating that his players are under pressure to win every time they play.
“We cope with pressure every week”
“We cope with pressure every week,” Rodgers noted. “I think that’s what being a Celtic player and in particular a Celtic manager is. So there’s no change in that aspect.
“The key thing of course is my job then to regulate that pressure for the squad and allow them to go and express themselves on play and that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve been thinking about what we want to achieve from the summer.
“We now go into this first game, we’re playing at home, we want to start off with a really good performance and get three points and we’ll be bringing that energy to the game and intensity to hopefully make that happen.
“But the pressure is a part of the job here,” Brendan explained.
Setting out his realistic goals for the campaign, the Celtic manage drew a reasonably positive but not overly ambitious line in the sand to gauge whether the campaign can be regarded as being a successful one with targets being met.
“Our intention firstly is to reach the play-off”
“I think our intention firstly is to reach the play-off,” Rodgers revealed. “I think if you look at the teams that go through, then over the course of the eight games, I think you’re really looking to reach that play-off phase. That would certainly be the objective that I would set first and foremost and then from there you can then gauge it.
“It’s a brilliant opportunity for us. And we know that in particular in this campaign over the course of the eight games, the home games will be absolutely vital for us.
“Everyone loves the possibility to come here”
“So bringing that energy from the pitch to encourage our support, which we know is unrivalled. I think everyone loves the possibility to come here but we know that we have to excite the supporters on the field.
“So that opportunity of course makes us really look forward to the game.”
