Brendan Rodgers has dismissed the latest attempt to make Sevco relevant to Celtic.
Ahead of Sunday’s Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden the hoops boss was a guest of Alan Brazil on TalkSPORT this morning.
After discussing the midweek Champions League results and the semi-final co-host Simon Jordan decided to go down the favoured route of those that don’t understand the football business.
Jordan lost his personal fortune taking Crystal Palace into administration in 2010 but likes to consider himself as some sort of business guru.
It’s all about Old Firm for characters like the former Palace supremo who feel that anything goes in order to bring in pounds from punters even if they are watching a ‘sport’ that is financially doped to the detriment of the public purse.
Initially Jordan tried to lure Rodgers in with a woolly question about the ‘fabric’ of the ‘SPL’ being better due to the ‘return’ of Rangers.
The Celtic boss sidestepped it by talking up the ability of Neil Lennon and Steve Clarke as he highlighted the strengths of Hearts and Hibs.
Jordan wasn’t happy with that and followed up asking: “To push you and keep you on top of you game, Rangers are a big club, and I’m not focussing on Rangers to the detriment of Hearts or Hibernian, but the size and scale of Rangers adds something to the SPL and pushes you as a manager. Do you feel that or does it not make any difference to you?
Rodgers’ reply was masterful. “It doesn’t make any difference to me, I came up here and the standard that I wanted to make was for Celtic, like I say Rangers as a competitor in the league of course it pushes you but no more so than what Hibs or Hearts will do.
“You look at these teams, and Aberdeen, clubs with great histories Simon. I think the league is very competitive but at Celtic we try to set our own standard and that’s to be the best that we can be.”
