Hoops boss not interested in pundits’ pelters
learned through experience to not listen. After the game my focus was on just making sure the players were okay, which they were, absolutely fine.
“I’m not on social media. I haven’t actually seen one letter that has been written or heard one word that has been spoken.
“Because it’s normally by people who don’t have any commitment to anything. They speak, they talk, they get paid, obviously, for an opinion, but it doesn’t bother me.
“I don’t listen to the phone-ins, It’s all about confirming their bias. It might be a bias towards a players, or a even manager.”
Rodgers added: “I’m beyond worrying. I’m here to do the best for Celtic and I’ll do what I think is the best thing for the club. Hopefully up until this point it has been okay. I continue to work that way, to be better, to improve the club in as many ways as I can help it.
“I would like to think the players have improved both individually and as a team.
“They’ve shown courage to go and play.
“Of course no-one wants to lose 7-1. It’ll always be open to ridicule from people who either don’t watch the game or just look at the result. But I can’t affect that.
“I don’t worry. When you try to have balls to play then you’re always going to be open to that.
“When you have an attacking philosophy people think you don’t necessarily work on defending.
“Fundamentally we defend very well. In terms of how we press and the aggression we have.
“There will always be criticism. But PSG beat Barcelona 4-0 last season and then they bought in £400 million worth of player to go on top of that. We’ve got to try and compete with it. We do our best, but it’s not enough.”
Rodgers admitted that Sweden internationailst Mikael Lustig, who limped off injured in the first half of the Group B match against PSG in midweek, and Nir Bitton, who replaced him, were doubts for the Betfred Cup final tomorrow.
However, he stressed that he is comfortable he has a strong enough squad to be able to deal with the loss of the right back and the Israeli midfielder, who has been playing in defence for Celtic this season, if they fail late fitness tests.
“We’ve got a couple of sore niggles around Lustig and Bitton,” he said.
“Tony Ralston is now in his last week of rehab so he won’t join the group till next week,” he said. “But we have Erik Sviatchenko and Kris Ajer, Cristian Gamboa, too. Apart from that the squad is absolutely fine.
“Jozo [Simunovic] came through the PSG game fine.
“The only reaction was a good one, and when you think he hasn’t played for a while, he did very well, considering.”