Brendan Rodgers has revealed that he has taken a fresh view of the January transfer window since moving to Celtic.
At Swansea and Liverpool the Irishman would operate cautiously in the winter window with only some fine tuning required with many Premier League managers happy to ignore transfer business.
Without coming out and saying it in so many words Rodgers has got one eye on next season’s Champions League qualifiers and the chance to build on the experiences he has picked up so far this season.
Getting through three rounds of qualifiers presents all sorts of demands on a squad with Rodgers setting a high benchmark in his recruits when he brought in Moussa Dembele and Scott Sinclair during the summer.
“The January window, from where I came from, it was always something that if you could improve then great but it wasn’t essential if the right player wasn’t available,” he explained to Celtic shareholders today.
“I will always maintain that, but I think coming here, having had the experience of the qualification campaign for the Champions League, then the January window is important because if we can go on to win the league again and get into the qualifiers then we have allowed the players to bed in for the qualifiers.”
Rodgers added: “The players are developing and they are only going to get better but we certainly need a profile of player to really, really compete because the Champions League is a few steps up from where we are playing.
“I experienced that at Liverpool too, it was another level up from the most competitive league in the world.
“We want to bring in the right type of player to, not just help us over the long term, but to really develop this team over the next few seasons.”
