We’ll get better and better- Rodgers vows after Day 1

Brendan Rodgers took a fairly detached view of Celtic’s 4-2 win over Ross County to open the defence of the SPFL title.

It was a strange match best highlighted by the first half corner count of 7-1 to the visitors with Celtic going in 3-0 in front.

Ross County ‘won’ the second half despite Celtic looking more like their old self, highlighted by Matt O’Riley’s goal from a brilliant pass by Kyogo Furuhashi.

There were two surprises when Rodgers announced his team with Carl Starfelt and Reo Hatate on the bench, later it emerged that the Swedish defender is looking for a transfer.

That opened the door for Maik Nawrocki to make his debut but it was the performance of Cameron Carter-Vickers, playing his first match in three months that brought some solidity to a new look defence.

We didn’t start the game well. I thought we were very slow to get up to speed and they started with a good intensity and gave us some pressure in that first 10-12 minutes.

Once we then got to grips with that and started to move the ball, we played some really good football.

I think it’s a difficult challenge when you play against a team that’s man-marking, and I thought Ross County deserve a lot of credit today because they stuck at it and they made it very difficult for us, but eventually we worked the goals really well. So we’re pleased overall with the three points.

It’s the first game of the season and gradually we’ll get better and better, but we saw some bits of really good play and we scored four goals and maybe could have had a few more with a bit of luck.

It remains to be seen of Starfelt is still a Celtic player by the time they face Aberdeen next Sunday but Rodgers will know that a big improvement will be required to take full points from Barry Robson’s side who started their season with a 0-0 draw today at Livingston.