Celtic v Falkirk – Everything said at Brendan’s Media Conference

Q: There’s been so much emphasis on what the squad will look like at the end of the window. What about the date of these games, obviously, come slightly before that. Do you have that date in mind to try and change the squad before then? Would you be confident that you would have any incomings before then?

Brendan Rodgers:  “Hopefully would be the answer to that. We have right up until I believe it’s the day before the game to change your squad, so hopefully that can be the case. I think we’ve said it all along, and I don’t want to dwell too much on it. It’s been constant and I’m not clever enough for you guys to say the same thing 20 times differently. So we hope that we can improve it, and hopefully by then we will do.”

Q: I spoke to you, Brendan, about the Livingston game before; you chose not to postpone it. Is that still the case, even though you’re due to face that mammoth journey afterwards, you’re still going to play that match?

Brendan Rodgers:  “Yeah, we’ll play the game. We looked at that and decided that we wanted to play that for a numbers of reasons. Obviously getting players up to speed and fitness and yeah, we’ll have a good squad of players here and if I need to rotate it and change it, I can do.”

Q: Just in terms of the transfers. Is it a frustration on your part that there are not the movements in the window that you would like in terms of that forward area? Are you becoming frustrated by this?

Brendan Rodgers:  “No, I’m philosophical about it. I think that the club has always notoriously done business towards the end of the window. And I’ve said it before, I think that all managers and coaches want the players in as soon as we can because preseason is for preparation and you want to be as prepared as you possibly can be. With the players we get in or not, what I know is that the players that are here have, you know, what has gone unnoticed a little bit is that we’ve made a really good start. You know, we’ve had two really good wins, played well. I know we’ll get better. But I can’t knock the the performance over the two games to get the results. And sometimes that has been clouded a wee bit in all this sort of negativity around the transfers. So I’m really just trying to focus on the guys that are here. There’s lots of stuff going on in the background and then hopefully we can come out of the end of the market in a in a good place.”

Q: Should we expect a strong team tomorrow night then, just to get the boys up to speed for the European tie?

Brendan Rodgers:  “It will be a strong team, whatever. You know, if I do make changes, I think that we’ve had players that have come back a little bit later, so they need to get up to speed. There are others that won’t play. I also have to maybe think Livingston, you know, rather than throwing players in for maybe a first game there. So the team will be strong and I’ll have a good bench if I need to affect it.”

Continues on the next page…