Bullish Rodgers hits back at his Champions League critics

Brendan Rodgers has defended Celtic’s performance in last season’s Champions League group stage.

In what appeared to be a favourable draw with Feyenoord the seeded side from Pot 1 the hoops were consigned to bottom place and no further European football when they lost Matchday 5 away to Lazio.

Poor summer recruitment alongside injuries to Cameron Carter-Vickers, Liel Abada and Reo Hatate left the side short on quality with no adequate replacements for Jota and Aaron Mooy identified.

Rodgers had returned in the summer to make an impact in Europe but it was a familiar story of failings salvaged only by a win over Feyenoord in a dead rubber, Gus Lagerbielke was the unlikely matchwinner.

After clinching the domestic double last season Celtic have started the new season well, with a new look Champions League format and what appears to be a favourable draw optimism is high ahead of the opener against Slovan Bratislava.

It appears to be a fresh start for Rodgers but he wasn’t prepared to write off last season’s efforts as the failure (4 minutes):

You look at the nuts and bolts of it, people will say you only got four points and then they will cry about that, and the season before and the season before…. I look at it that last year was (down to) decisive moments. Apart from the game away in Madrid where we lost a man early on and got punished by a team that got to the quarter-final. I thought in the other games showed up well in.

We could have won the Lazio game, and should never have lost it. Feyenoord at home we were good and won the game. Away to Feyenoord we were good and right in it, then we concede and lost two men and that’s the challenge. For me looking at it I thought if we can strengthen the squad we can take another step closer, and we did that.

After facing Slovan Celtic have a Bundesliga double bill coming up, away to Borussia Dortmund followed by a visit from RB Leipzig.