Rodgers: We will take the fight to City
BRENDAN RODGERS has vowed there will be no repeat of Celtic’s ‘passive’ Champions League start when Manchester City visit Parkhead on Wednesday.
Stung by the 7-0 defeat to Barcelona on night one, the manager insists his players will react by tackling City with an aggression that was missing in the Nou Camp.
With a perfect record from their opening six matches, City top the English Premier League and also crushed Borussia Monchengladbach 4-0 24 hours after Celtic’s harsh lesson in Catalonia.
Nevertheless, Rodgers wants his players to tap into the energy created by a capacity Celtic Park crowd and take the game to Pep Guardiola’s team.
He said: ‘We’re coming across a real machine that has started the season very well but we are at home. We’ll look to learn from our last experience and we certainly won’t be as passive.
‘No matter how good we think we are, we can’t go and match Barcelona in football terms in the Nou Camp. But I think we had only three fouls in the game.
‘City will be similar to Barcelona, not as fine-tuned of course, but
certainly they have a level of player that is right up there with the best in Europe.
‘Being at home is a big advantage, as has been proved at Celtic Park over a number of years.
‘What the crowd gives us is a bit special, so it will be a gre#at evening for them.
‘Certainly, we will be much more aggressive than what we were last time.’
Celtic warmed up for Manchester City’s visit with a convincing 6-1 win over Kilmarnock yesterday.
Moussa Dembele grabbed two goals, with James Forrest, Leigh Griffiths — who came on as a substitute after being out injured for three weeks — Scott Sinclair and Tom Rogic also finding the net in front of a crowd of 53,532.
Before that scoring spree, however, came a spectacular long-range opener from Kilmarnock striker Souleymane Coulibaly, which gave the visitors a 32nd-minute lead.
‘It was a great team performance,’ said Rodgers.
‘We started well and then in fairness to the kid (Coulibaly), he scores a brilliant goal out of nowhere really.
‘You won’t see too many better goals than that over the course of the weekend.
‘Sometimes those kind of goals can really shock a team but we stayed calm.
‘Our attacking play today was really good but equal to that, if not better, was our defensive aggression — the hunger in the team to get the ball back and press allowed us to go and get the goals.’
Rodgers was full of praise for the ruthless Dembele, who took his season’s tally to an impressive 10 before being replaced by the returning Griffiths after 65 minutes.
‘Moussa scored two good goals,’ added the Celtic boss.
‘If you look at his record, virtually all of his goals have come in the penalty box and that’s great.
‘A lot of modern-day strikers spend a lot of time outside the box but Moussa is a boy who wants to get inside the box and score goals.’
Having watched his team edge in front in such an eye-catching way, Kilmarnock manager Lee Clark admitted he was left feeling sore for Coulibaly.
‘Poor Souleymane,’ said Clark. ‘Everyone will forget that goal now.
‘We did quite well with the game plan in the first 35 minutes.
‘We knew our frontmen could cause Celtic problems, although we didn’t realise he would produce a finish quite like that — it was out of this world.
‘But Celtic stepped it up a level. We got blown away in the second half— men against boys in every aspect.
‘We had a young team out there and we’ve got to learn from it.
‘We could have done better but we came up against a class act.’