Brendan Rodgers won’t speak to the media on Friday ahead of Celtic vs Kilmarnock this weekend.
Due to the short turnaround between the midweek loss to Lazio and the Killie game, the Celtic manager’s press conference actually took place on Wednesday.
It was squeezed in at the end of his post-Lazio media outing with the club releasing the video late on Thursday. (Celtic)
Rodgers was asked just three questions at the end of a cruel evening — two of which centred around the very obvious media narrative of Kilmarnock being the only Scottish side to have beaten us this season.
It was an easy route for them to go down given Killie’s League Cup win over us in August. Yet Rodgers reckons that his side have come a long way in the seven weeks since.
“We’re in a totally different place to what we were when we played in the cup game, with the greatest respect,” he said.
“[Against Lazio] it was a great night for us and it looked like we were going to get something from the game and win the game. It didn’t happen, but this is football.
“When you’re at a big club, playing lots of games, you have to analyse and then move on after 24 hours. That’s the strength of this group. We’ve had one or two little upsets in this early part of the season but the players have responded brilliantly.
“We’ll get going again tomorrow [Thursday]. We’ll recover and after a few days we’ll be ready to go again on Saturday with a big attitude and energy in the game.
“I just think we’re a different team, a different mentality from that moment [last Kilmarnock defeat]. Lots of new players were bedding in there at that time. But Kilmarnock deserved to win it. We’ve learned from that and moved on.”
Since that Rugby Park defeat, Alistair Johnston, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Reo Hatate have all returned to the fold. Maik Nawrocki and Liel Abada are now injured but the general feeling is that this Celtic side are in a much better place, domestically at least.
The effect of the artificial surface in Ayrshire can’t be overstated either. Killie will find things much more challenging on the vast, grass pitch at Celtic Park.
Celtic appear to exist in a strange vacuum right now. We are by far the best team in Scotland but are unable to translate that into results on the continent.
European progress is hopefully in the offing. But for now, we just need to try and clinch another three Premiership points. If we do we’ll go seven points clear of St. Mirren and ten ahead of Rangers with those two meeting in Paisley on Sunday.
In other news, Hyunjun Yang, Luis Palma and the unavoidable Jota feeling at Celtic
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