Brendan Rodgers relished the fact that Philippe Clement was his FIFTH Old Firm victim after he recently killed a Rangers boss.
The Celtic manager defeated his fiercest opponents 2-1 at Parkhead to record his 12th victory in 15 Glasgow derbies.Following the Belgian’s arrival at Ibrox, Clement’s team had gone 16 games without a loss going into yesterday’s match. However, Rodgers claims that his club consistently delivers the goods anytime there is speculation of a more formidable challenge from throughout the city. In his two stints in command, he has now defeated five Rangers permanent managers: Pedro Caixinha, Steven Gerrard, Michael Beale, Clement, and Mark Warburton.
In his last stint with the Hoops, he also defeated Graeme Murty, the temporary boss. Additionally, Rodgers stated, “Over my two spells here, I’ve worked against five Rangers managers,” following his team’s eight-point victory at the top of the Premiership standings. Rangers always seemed to be around. Each and every time, eventually. Thus, this seems typical to me. We would live in continual crisis mode and be afraid of Rangers if I followed the media.
But this is now their fifth manager. I therefore only ever pay close attention to Celtic and concentrate heavily on this. Thankfully, I choose to ignore a lot of what might be going on around.
“We proved today that we are a competitive team capable of playing good football, even though we are still lacking some key players who will make the difference for us.” That’s what we’ll keep doing.
“Philippe has undoubtedly made Rangers better. He joined the team and immediately made good use of his experience and common sense.
They play as a team and are competitive. Thus, we were aware that it would be a problem. Still, we had to have great bravery. We had to accept the challenge, and throughout my time here, I have always done so.
Paulo Bernardo and Kyogo Furuhashi goals gave Rodgers’ club the victory over a Rangers team that was down to ten men following Leon Balogun’s red card in the second half. Even though James Tavernier scored a late goal to give the visitors hope, Rodgers believed his team deserved to win.
And when they return injured players from the winter break and bolster their roster in the January transfer window, he anticipates them to be even better. “We will be stronger,” he declared. Reo Hatate is back in the mix, and Liel Abada’s return helps us because he can score goals.
“Players like Cameron Carter-Vickers, who will be prepared following the break, will return. And maybe we can strengthen the team. We should improve in the second half of the season, in my opinion.
The game today was really stressful, as you would anticipate, and the atmosphere was fantastic. I thought we should have won. We played a pretty good game with little alarms, especially after the second goal.
“Our 11 vs 10 game was the lone drawback. My teams would typically be a little more in control. It’s possible that young gamers get overly excited about the game, and that’s something we should work on. However, the players gave a great effort throughout, and the crowd helped them out well.
Callum McGregor, the captain of Celtic, received special recognition from Rodgers for his man-of-the-match performance in the middle of the park. He acknowledges that he’s fortunate to still have the Scotland player at the club after two stints, and he thinks the player could excel in any setting.
“What an amazing player,” remarked Rodgers. Whoa. Of that child, you can feel such pride. I’ve now seen him in two different guises. He matured and became a pretty significant player for me when I initially came here.
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