LEICESTER, ENGLAND - APRIL 28: Leicester City Manager Brendan Rodgers with Arsenal Manager Unai Emery ahead of the Premier League match between Leicester City and Arsenal at The King Power Stadium on April 28, 2019 in Leicester, United Kingdom. (Photo by Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images)
Chris Sutton has urged Brendan Rodgers to study and note how Aston Villa beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
A day after Celtic crumbled to Borussia Dortmund Unai Emery was master minding a famous victory over one of the truly legendary European sides.
While Celtic attacked Borussia Dortmund without fear Villa took stock of their opponents, adapted their normal game and emerged with a famous victory on the back or iron discipline and an inspired goal from John Duran coming off the bench.
Villa fans were thrilled, television viewers were enthralled by the contest as Emery demonstrated his vast European experience to achieve the desired result with a group of players that are virtually novices at Champions League level.
It was a sobering contrast to the events in Dortmund the previous night, highlighting where Celtic can learn from Villa Sutton explained his thinking in the Daily Record:
In terms of Rodgers’ approach, again, I stress there’s nothing wrong with having an identity and philosophy, but there’s also nothing wrong with amending it to suit a scenario. I was at Villa Park on Wednesday and watched Unai Emery’s approach to beating Bayern Munich.
That’s an English Premier League team spending vast sums of money, but it was 4-4-2 and the full-backs barely moved out of their own half. Struggling to beat an aggressive man-on-man press, they ended up just thrashing balls over the press trying to hit Ollie Watkins.
Thirty-six per cent possession, yet a famous victory. There are levels in football and Emery felt he had to go that way to overcome a higher power. I sat at the Champions League Final just five months ago and Borussia were better than Real Madrid for the first half. They have far-superior players to Celtic. That’s just a fact.
Going forward, there has to be an acknowledgement there are better ways to try to combat superior opponents than my old team displayed in Dortmund.
Atalanta in three weeks time will be a huge test for Rodgers and his squad.
Very few Celtic fans expect to take even a point from the Italian side but a streetwise performance will provide hope that lessons are finally being learned towards progressing at the very highest level.
I didn’t watch the Villa match (didn’t watch any football on Wednesday – bit sick of it) so didn’t know that they did to Bayern as we did to Barcelona in 2012, but that is the template for beating more talented and expensively assembled sides. It’s a very low possession figure for a top 4 EPL side and they won’t have been used to playing like that at all, but the coach and players made it work. Hopefully somebody will give Brendan a DVD of the match…maybe Sutton!
Chris Sutton simply cannot lecture anyone on football management…
However he does talk very sensibly here and I wholeheartedly agree with his ascertation here !
So I don’t buy into this every mistake was punished narrative, the mistake, THE MISTAKE, was the way in which the players were instructed to play.
High press , leaving us open, short passing/playing ball out every time, against a more physical, and technical team, failing to adapt to their weakness. This was a monumental failure belonging to Brendan Rodgers alone. Yes there were individual errors but these occur in every game. But the selection and as a result the performance of our defence was in my view abysmal.
Rodgers should take 100% of the blame on this .
Keep It tight at back and midfield.Kyogo is quick enough to catch them out at back. Dont know how many times this season that through pass is on but decide to play wide instead.
Absolutely agree. Horses for courses.