Brown will stick with good habits which put Bhoys on the right path
VIRTUALLY the first act of Brendan Rodgers’ stewardship of Celtic was to acquire buy-in from club captain Scott Brown. Over a home-cooked meal at the manager’s home in London, Brown was treated to a vision for the future and also an ultimatum on his own fitness.
Impressed by the former Liverpool boss’s blueprint, Brown resolved to get himself in shape and lead from the front. Even in the face of the most humbling of defeats to Paris Saint-Germain on Thursday, Brown remains loyal to his master’s ideology.
Rodgers contends that only by trying to develop an expansive, risk-taking style of football will Celtic evolve on the European stage. When the likes of Neymar, Edinson Cavani and Kylian Mbappe are on the premises, the chances of a serious pratfall are inevitable.
Those three shared five of the goals in PSG’s 7-1 win the Parc des Princes on Wednesday but Brown, who held his hands up for delivering the loose pass that allowed Neymar to equalise Moussa Dembele’s stunning first-minute opener, agrees that such pain — and even embarrassment — should not throw Celtic off course.
‘No matter what, the manager always wants you to take the ball and play football, take the ball up the park,’ says Brown. ‘At Swansea, you saw the football that developed over the years and that is what we want to try and get to here.
‘When you are playing against top-quality players it is always hard but the first 15-20 minutes against PSG we actually played quite well.
‘We were composed and tried to keep the ball and then there was one minute of brilliance from them.
‘I think we kind of angered them with the first goal. We knew what they were going to do, it is just hard to try and stop them. You either sit back and defend for 90 minutes, play ugly.
‘Or you try and play your own way. For me you are better to try and express yourself than try and sit in for 90 minutes.’
Unbeaten domestically under Rodgers over 64 games, Celtic know how it feels to relentlessly grind the opposition into submission.
The irony of being schooled by opponents with a uniformly better quality of player and vastly superior spending power is not lost on the Parkhead skipper.
‘It was always going to be hard for us, we understood that,’ admitted Brown. ‘It was a sloppy pass from myself for the first goal but PSG have some great individual players too.
‘Look at Dani Alves, the best right-back over the last ten years. Neymar is going to be one of the best players in the world.
‘With their movement, their front three create every time they go forward.
‘What they created, their accuracy from shots on target, was phenomenal. For me if they don’t think they are going to score they don’t shoot.
‘They keep the ball and make you work for the next minute or two and it does tire you out.
‘We understand that because that is what we try and do to every team in the SPFL. We try and tire them out because we believe in our fitness levels.
‘Our fitness levels were great, we have worked hard, but it is not always about fitness it is about quality, individual brilliance, team spirit and the press — and the way they keep the ball is phenomenal.
‘It is something we need to look forward to and try and do to teams.’
The weight of the defeat was such that it was possible to overlook the fact that Celtic remain in an excellent position to fulfil the goal set for his team by Rodgers at the start of the group stage.
The 3-0 win over third seeds Anderlecht on match-night two yielded the only points collected by either team over the course of the campaign.
Anything better than defeat by the same margin when the teams meet in Glasgow on Tuesday week and Celtic will avoid Group B’s bottom spot and parachute into the last 32 of the Europa League.
‘If you looked at the group at the start you would take third spot all day long,’ added Brown. ‘Our aim at the start of the season was to get to the Champions League.
‘Once we got there we wanted European football after Christmas. It is in our hands now.’