Brendan Rodgers and Cameron Carter-Vickers are confident Celtic will be able to move on quickly from the misery of Tuesday night’s defeat to Atletico Madrid.
There’s no getting around it, the 6-0 scoreline was a sore one to take for the players, staff and supporters. But nothing stands still during a season and Celtic must find a way to quickly put it behind them.
Aberdeen visit Celtic Park on Sunday and three points are a must to maintain a healthy Scottish Premiership points gap over Rangers in second-place.
Rodgers is relishing the challenge of picking his players up after the result in Madrid, insisting the signs in training this week have been positive.
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He said [Daily Record, 11/11 print edition]: “That is why you coach and manage. I’ve said before, you grieve for 24 hours than you move on. You can’t dwell too much as that’s why we get paid, to give players confidence with my speeches and coaching.
“After the disappointment, they have come back in and been very good. There is no difference in terms of the preparation no matter who we play. Every game is a big game for us and we have prepared well for Aberdeen.”
Defender Carter-Vickers is also insistent the squad will be able to move on. After a period of video analysis, he’s made it clear the players are solely focused on this weekend’s challenge.
The USA international said: “It was obviously disappointing. I know they scored the early goal but in the large part we competed fairly well when it was 11 versus 11. Once we had a man sent off, we could have dealt with that situation a bit better. We’ve looked back at it and seen where we went wrong and what we can do better.
“Is it hard to watch? Yes and no. We are an honest group and that is why we can move on quickly. We have honest conversations about the game. Then we focus on the next one.”
The home crowd will be expecting a strong performance tomorrow afternoon. It’s crucial we see a reaction from the team and punish any fatigue in Aberdeen’s legs from their Thursday match in Greece.
With Rangers playing ahead of the Bhoys’ kick-off and potentially clawing back three points, the players must show Atletico is already a distant memory.
In other news, Cameron Carter-Vickers discusses ‘the most impressive thing’ about Liam Scales at Celtic right now.
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