BRENDAN Rodgers has told his defenders to get their act together as they prepare to return to the European arena.
The Celtic manager has not been happy with the defensive display in each of the last two matches – Kilmarnock away when they lost for only the second time domestically and Saturday’s Scottish Cup tie with Partick Thistle when Jozo Simunovic gifted Kris Doolan a goal.
He has been impressing the importance of staying switched on because he knows that one lapse could be so costly against a team like Zenit St Petersburg.
Assistant boss Chris Davies said: “The manager has been reinforcing to them the concentration aspect. It’s really important at this level, when you are facing teams like Zenit it can be about that mental fatigue.
“You need to concentrate, be switched on and alive, for every single moment of the game.
“That’s going to be very important on Thursday to ensure we are defensively solid.
“You can work on it in training. Domestically we are used to having a lot of the ball, then you come in to Europe and you are not the team with most of the ball.
“It’s something you look at in training and try to help the players. The manager has been reinforcing to the player the important of defensive organisation, concentrating on being hard to beat.
“We know we have threats going the other way.”
Davies is not sure why errors have begun to creep into Celtic’s play since the winter break but he knows they have to be eradicated at Celtic Park tomorrow night.
He added: “There’s never usually one thing, it can be a combination of factors. It might be there’s an individual lapse. It can happen in football, it’s about making sure you learn from it and don’t make the same mistakes again.
“Sometimes it’s the opposition showing that bit of qualify finishing off the chances they wouldn’t normally.
“As a team it’s about closing down the spaces quickly. These are the things we are looking to address to make sure we are defensively sound.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel