“I understand the consequences,” Brendan Rodgers tells The Celtic Star

Q: Brendan, with regards to your unhappiness at the lack of speed that was in your team’s play on Sunday, do you feel you have the players with the pace that you need in the squad just now? Do you feel that there is that capability there with the players you have at your disposal just now?

Brendan Rodgers: “I think this was part of my explanation to the first question. No, we don’t. It’s a different profile of player. If you think of what we had, the football is going to look different. Kyogo Furuhashi and Daizen when he’s playing and Nicholas Kuhn, it’s a different level of speed, so we don’t have that. The game will look different, but we can still be better and faster and more dynamic in our actions, and that’s the challenge.”

Q: Is that something that Alistair Johnston can possibly help you with? That’s a good part of his game, Daizen Maeda being out exacerbating it as well?

Brendan Rodgers: “I think that’s their strength, their physicality. Obviously he’s been out for a while, but he gets into the areas that we want to arrive into and creates goals as well as giving the balance defensively. Daizen, like you say, wherever he’s played, if you think of the Motherwell game, I used him on the right, on the left and he ends up going through the middle so his importance is hugely missed. But we also need more from everyone and I know the squad are very determined to deliver that.”

Q: “Brendan, I don’t know if you’re aware of a Glasgow phrase, the word scunnered. Some people may be suggesting that you’re seeming a bit scunnered given all the things around the club in the summer and protests and all that kind of stuff and even injuries and form and all that stuff. Is that the case, and who motivates the motivator? You mentioned intensity and all these things.  How is that from your perspective in terms of the job and what’s ahead of you in the next few weeks and months?”

Brendan Rodgers:  “I think that I’ve never been more motivated in my time at Celtic. If I look at my own style as a coach, I would say I’m a transformational; it’s a transformational style, so I think I can come into a club and teach and inspire and motivate players. At this point in time, I can’t be any more motivated to turn it around because it’s okay when you’re winning trophies and playing great football and everything else.

The challenge is, and we all have seen the challenges from the summer through to now and the continuation of that. I’m so determined to try and turn the feeling around, the feeling on and off the pitch, because for me it’s not what Celtic is about or not what Celtic should be about. This is an amazing club, and yeah, you will get frustrated at times. We’re only human, and you will get disappointed like you are at the weekend because I can never, with the greatest respect to Dundee, I would never expect a Celtic team to go and lose. That’s what I’ve always felt about here.

We were talking six months ago about challenging at the latter stages of Champions League and now we’re losing these types of games. So I’m super motivated to do the very best that I can for this club, and that motivation is burning inside to be able to do that.”

Q: The next fortnight feels particularly important in terms of how the season is going to look. If you say that to the players, if you can come through the next couple of weeks unscathed, it could be a liftoff for them?

Brendan Rodgers:  “I haven’t touched on that purely because it’s always about the next game. I think beyond and outside of coaching and managing, you look at the fixtures and you tend to look at how it maybe can look. But as a coach and manager in the modern game you can look no further than the next game, and that’s been our sole focus. We need to get our performance level to a higher level, and if we do that we’ll hopefully be in a better position.

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