Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has said that he wants his side to be compact and aggressive in their forthcoming UEFA Champions League game against Atalanta. The Scottish Champions let a two goal lead slip at home to Aberdeen but the focus now switches to the trip to Bergamo on Wednesday.
Speaking after Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Aberdeen at Celtic Park, the Irishman stated that he is expecting a difficult evening but expects his team to be difficult to break down.
“Listen, you can always concede goals. It’s all down to looking at us in the press, and it’ll be a totally different game.
“Atalanta, having played them before and obviously seen them play, it’s a totally different game. They’re probably the best man-to-man marking team in world football, how they work.
“The football will be different, but we’ve already had that.
“If you’re not quite on it, and you’re not compact, and you’re not tight, and you’re not aggressive, you can get punished at the very highest level. But for us, we’re disappointed with the two goals.
“We showed a great reaction. We should win the game on chances and opportunities and the dominance that we had, but we didn’t.
“And you give credit to Aberdeen because they defended manfully, and especially during that last period.”
Celtic were excellent in the first half but failed to capitalise on chances at 2-0, which will have annoyed the manager. The chance from Kyogo to make it 3-0 sticks in the mind as minutes later Aberdeen had pulled one back and were soon level. Celtic cannot be as slack in possession and as passive in their defending as they were against the Dons.
Celtic’s European displays thus far could be described as being Jekyll and Hyde. The opening night win over Slovan Bratislava showed all the qualities of this Celtic team under the lights of Paradise, which set the team up for the trip to Dortmund. The Celts were totally off it in Germany and were soundly thrashed 7-1 by last year’s Champions League Finalists.
So is that Rodgers possibly looking at Paulo and Engels playing more compact, so calmac isn’t left so isolated?
Might also call upon idah to be used as a potential outball, with trying to hold up play in order to get better support to him?
Would be a totally different approach to how we have been playing this season?
But after dortmund, it would be suicidal to try and play with such an open midfield approach again imo?
Would also require our full backs and wide men to link up well to create anything from our wider areas also?
Wouldn’t say we have many options from the bench to keep such a gameplan in operation for the full 90 minutes?
Especially when a squad has been formed to play in a more open attacking style of play, with our wide men pushing so high up the pitch.
So going from a 433 to a 451 could well work?
Surely anything would work better than what was produced in dortmund?