Brendan Rodgers spoke to the media yesterday afternoon ahead of tomorrow’s trip to McDiarmid Park…
Q: I think Celtic fans may have got a bit excited at seeing pictures of Kasper Schmeichel at training. Has he made a quick recovery?
Brendan Rodgers: “No, no, he’s clearly not damaged his feet. So, he can use his feet and work on his touch and whatnot. The timeline we’ve been given has been five to six weeks by the medical experts, but that could be sooner. So, he feels good, he’s got some mobility, he’s got rotation there, but we just obviously have to be careful with the blade and his shoulders. But he can do other things, so he’s out on the training field and working on the technical side of his game.”
Q: How’s everything else? You’ve been here before; how do you sum up that mindset when you get to this stage where you’re looking to just drive over the line?
Brendan Rodgers: “Yeah, it’s a good feeling because obviously we get a chance to train, we get a chance to figure out maybe any issues that we’ve had in any of the games, and then we can then go into the weekend and look to perform. The feeling’s really good. The players have been brilliant this week in training, I have to say, watching the level. It’s very easy, especially when we’ve had a few days’ sunshine up here, it can feel relaxed. But it’s anything but that at this stage of the season, it’s really about your focus, and then training with a big heart every single day in your training, and then you look to take that into the game at the weekend. So, yeah, the boys have been really good this week.”
Q: League reconstruction has been discussed this week; do you have a preference as to what that would look like?
Brendan Rodgers: “I’ve just heard that, someone mentioned the possibility of it getting smaller or increasing. I certainly don’t think it needs to get smaller. If it goes any way, I think there’s still a notion for me that we could bring a few more teams into the league. Clearly, there’s maybe issues around TV revenue, money, or whatever way that would look like, and there might be a challenge to that. But I think from a football perspective, I always felt that the increase in the league would help.”
Still believe that the hardest part of our summer, is going to be keeping hold of Maeda imo?
Certainly warrants an improved contract, but that only enables ourselves to get a bigger fee for him really, and wouldn’t put the bigger clubs off from approaching him either?
Hopefully we can keep hold of him as a very valuable player for ourselves.
Yet it has thrown up the problem for Rodgers in how he might intend to set up the attacking areas within the squad for next season?
Don’t see Rodgers changing from the 3 attacking front line.
This season with 7 options within the 25man squad, at a split of 5 wide and 2 strikers, with Maeda as the 3rd choice striker option.
With Maeda currently our 1st choice striker now, could be interesting to see how Rodgers intends to make up our attacking options for next season, especially if kuhn should depart as many are expecting?
Kenny is possibly still going to struggle for game time in the remainder of this season as a 3rd striker option at present?
So are we going to be looking for more wider options for ourselves now, with the striker roles already filled?
Which in turn might have ourselves increasing to 8 attacking options than this season 7 that was originally put in place for ourselves?