Brendan Rodgers has now delivered a message to the younger players in his Celtic squad

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Brendan Rodgers has been criticised by some sections of the Celtic support for signing too many ‘project players’ in the summer.

The Hoops boss spent £19m on 10 players during the last transfer window and just two of those were over the age of 23 at the time.

The Northern Irishman has admitted himself that he isn’t overly content with the business done, before going on to say that the squad requires more “quality” to progress forward.

He’s kicked that pledge into motion this month with the signing of exciting 24-year-old winger Nicolas Kuhn from Rapid Vienna but he’ll be hopeful of bringing a few more, namely a left-back and striker.

But even though Rodgers has hinted this season that the recruitment in the summer could have been stronger, it doesn’t mean to say that he’s just written these younger players off already.

Brendan Rodgers message to Celtic’s young players

The Celtic boss – speaking exclusively to Celtic TV – says the likes of Marco Tilio, Kwon and Odin Thiago Holm, to name a few, just need time to develop at the club.

And he used Liam Scales and Paulo Bernardo’s growth in the Celtic first-team this season as prime examples of how players can develop during their time at Parkhead.

But Rodgers does have a message to the younger players in his squad – and that is to work on their consistency and focus on having a stronger mindset throughout the second-half of the campaign.

Asked initially how the squad can improve in the coming months, Rodgers replied: “Well, I think the consistency is the main one. I’ve been absolutely delighted to work with the players, good guys. We lost some important players and obviously a lot of younger players that had come in and will take a wee bit of time to adapt.

“Some of those have begun to emerge, the likes of Liam Scales. He’s not a young player, of course, but he came into the team and has done great. Paulo Bernardo, this last period, has settled in very well. But that’s how long it can sometimes take for a young player coming from a different country, different culture and different expectations.

“It’s been great to see the likes of them coming through. For me, it’s just that consistency and mentality and that will hopefully spread into that performance level. We’ve seen that in the last four games, we’ve been much more like what we’ve been.

“We’ve had other really good performances, Atletico Madrid at home, we were very clinical against Aberdeen. In the second half of the season, we can continue to grow and development the mindset of the players and team and look to have a really exciting second part to the season.”