No Dembele No Griffiths No sweat
Rodgers isn’t panicking about injury crisis as he puts his faith in squad
NO Moussa Dembele. No Leigh Griffiths. No problem.
If Brendan Rodgers is worried about going into tonight’s Champions League showdown without his two sharpest-shooters, he’s hiding it well.
Then again, he went through all of last season doing that too.
Dembele and Griffiths may have hit seven goals in the six do-or-die qualifiers a year ago but Rodgers has spent a season reshaping Celtic and ensuring the whole set-up doesn’t rely on individuals.
Restructuring, reworking, finding ways and systems.
Losing one is disappointing. Losing two is frustrating. But none of the blows is fatal. The hours put in at Lennoxtown, the teachings of tactics, the flexibility.
All geared towards situations like this. Callum McGregor deployed at left-back. Scott Brown dropping into a near centre-back position. Rotations of three to four at the back within seconds.
The situation last term when Scott Sinclair played up front, a role also taken at times by Patrick Roberts and Tom Rogic.
It’s not square pegs in round holes anymore. It’s just having adjustable pieces for your jigsaw.
Rodgers would rather have Dembele and Griffiths against Rosenborg but the card house won’t collapse without them in the most intense of situations.
Asked if he’d prefer to be at his strongest up front for the tie, he said: “We still might be. We didn’t have a striker at Hearts and we scored five.
“That’s what you need. Multiple goalscorers. We have Rogic who scores, Sinclair who scores, James Forrest chips in, Stuart Armstrong can score.
“We have enough goalscorers in there. Just because it’s not a traditional goalscorer doesn’t mean you can’t score. You just have to find a different way”
Put simply, just because there’s tightness in Dembele’s hamstring doesn’t mean there’s any in the Celtic set-up.
Rogic is set to get the nod as what modern coaches call a false nine tonight and Rodgers said: “It gives you superiority. It’s very difficult to play against and I’ve done it wherever I’ve been.
“That floating player forcing the centre-half to come in or come out and what you need is pace in behind him.
“It can gain you superiority in an effective area of the field.
“You will always have in your squad the reference point of a number nine.
“For me, that nine needs to be able and have mobility.
“But, if they are not available, it’s about being able to move and find other ways.
“That was the beauty of last season, what we developed from.”
Of course, the manager can talk tactics all day long. He’d certainly rather do that than discuss transfer speculation or the Green Brigade.
Football fans these days are excellently educated yet, naturally, there will be some who struggle with Rodgers’ subtle nuances.
For them, it’s all chat. What counts is performances, whatever way you do it, and the Celtic fans trust Rodgers because of the way he has sent his players out in the last 12 months.
Sure it’s talent, sure it’s technical ability. But, as Rodgers says, it’s as much about attitude and application. He added: “We had to get them mentally right and then, over the course of the season, we were able to play a different system, different structures.
“Then we arrived at this point where we have courage.
“British teams, in the main, have a courage which is physical.
“Be aggressive and strong but then sometimes what happens is that, when the pressure is on, the players and coaches get nervous.
“This team now is building towards having courage to play.
“We are at a point where, in these games, there is a different feel and a different courage to accept the ball and have the nerve to play.
“We have morphed from a defensive system and then different attacking systems within the game.
“The style is always the same,