Barca drubbing stirs unhappy memories of Bren’s last 7-0 reverse – with St Mirren strike ace John his tormentor in chief

watching and knowing what was happening. I’ve had Swansea, Liverpool and Celtic teams doing the same to opponents.

“I don’t think I’ve ever looked at a clock for as long in my life in a game. It was starting to worry me when the clock score is equating to the score on the scoreboard!

“Of course it was tough. But the jump is huge. Premier League teams going into that level have players on £120,000 a week who still suffer.

“With all due respect, if you look at guys coming out here on £2,000 or £3,000 a week up against players of that level, we have to be realistic. I know it hurts, it’s hard to see.”

Looking purely at the personnel on the teamsheet, Rodgers could have been accused of being too adventurous with Scott Sinclair and Patrick Roberts supporting Moussa Dembele from the flanks.

But asked if he planned to dig in the next time the sides meet, he laughed: “Believe it or not we were trying to be pragmatic by playing 5- 4-1 and condensing the space.

“We felt if Bayern Munich can play counter attack against them then we can.

“But we real ly needed the penalty we won to go in to give us energy and to get the crowd thinking ‘ B****y hell they can do something here’.

“Instead we miss it and they go up and score the second.

“In the second half because of everything, legs running out of the team, it’s going to be four or five.

“But the last 10 minutes made it worse than it maybe should have been.

“We felt we would be stretched with a back four but we could block things out better at the back with a five.

“We t hen wanted to play with a narrow four – and they were super narrow.

“S inc la i r and Roberts did great in closing down and i f they were invited to the outside we would try to press it from there.

“Then we had a bit of pace and a bit of power up front with Dembele and that was the plan.

“We wanted to keep it quiet for 20 or 25 minutes and be super aggressive around Neymar, Messi and be super compact. The only thing we didn’t do was be tenacious. We weren’t aggressive.”

His task now is to make sure the players are up for a trip to face Inverness today.

Rodgers said: “My job is to stabilise the emotions of the players. They have gone from a brilliant performance and result last Saturday to losing 7- 0.

“It doesn’t matter who you are playing, you feel humiliated.

“On Sunday, we must be relentless. It’ll be a difficult game.

“But when you’re champions you have to bounce back.”