“I thought we were here to talk about Raith Rovers,” Brendan Rodgers

Q: How tough will it be to convince Greg his future lies here with Kieran Tierney coming in the summer, albeit there are so many big games that it comes very involved? Does that make it tougher?

Brendan Rodgers: “I’ve had a number of open conversations with Greg on it and I do think that is an issue. There’s no doubt about that. He’s been a starter here for virtually six years. He’s always had a challenge that he’s overcome from other players coming in, which is a great testament to him and his mentality and his professionalism. He knows Kieran well and he knows his qualities and his abilities but there still can be room for two of them here. There’s absolutely no doubt, you know, in an upward of 35 to 60 games a season, we can’t play one player and I wouldn’t want to play one player in all of those because you’re just not going to have the right physicality, you’re going to need an intensity.

“So, to have two players of that quality here would be brilliant for the club, for the team and obviously for the changing room. So that’s probably the things that Greg has to think about. From my perspective, I don’t see it as a problem because I know he’ll play a lot of games, he’ll play big games and like I said, as with Kieran. So, he has to decide for himself that it would be a different role for him but it’s not something that we still can’t conclude.”

Q: His performances have been great recently and he still has a big part to play this season no matter what happens, doesn’t he?

Brendan Rodgers: “I’ve had a lot of respect for him as a footballer and as a person. Even at Motherwell, I thought he was excellent, just his aggression on the ball and his position he plays the role perfectly for us how we want, you know, he knows when to be inside, outside, he’s level, he’s passing everything is at such a consistent level? So, yeah, I just think that it is his time he has sat on a five-year deal and he is now down to his last four months, I think we’ll get the same from him. Of course, from a manager’s perspective, you’re always trying to stabilise your squad and stabilise young guys with their futures as well. That ultimately is down to them and their decision.

Q: What are your thoughts on Raith Rovers and Barry Robson?

Brendan Rodgers: “Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing Barry. I was disappointed for him at Aberdeen because I think when he stepped up he’d done a really, really good job. The challenge of Europe for any club is really, really difficult and he’d done so well in his time there that he’d qualified Aberdeen into Europe and the shallowness of the squad meant it was really difficult for him. He was in European football going away and the expectation and then coming back. If I was honest at the time, you want to see the manager back and allowed to go through that tough phase of it all because it’s tough because he has done so well and then maybe he’d never quite had the squad to support that and that isn’t the manager’s problem.

“So it’d be nice for him to be able to ride through that, learn from it and then go again because having just stepped up, he’d done a good job. So I was disappointed when he lost his job but good to see him back in. It will be good to see him tomorrow. His teams will always be like him. He was a competitive player and a tough player and they’ll come to defend very, very well. So we just have to make sure we play our game because that’s what I’ve learnt in this year and a half since I’ve been here is that our true strength is when we are at our level and we can do that in all phases of the game and then we aim to then get through from that into the next round.”

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