Brendan Rodgers, the Celtic manager, believes that Derek McInnes has prioritised personal happiness as he turned down the Rangers managerial role this week.

It seemed a certainty that McInnes, the Aberdeen manager, would be enticed away from the Granite City to take over as the permanent successor to Pedro Caixinha, who was relieved of his post with the Ibrox club six weeks ago.

McInnes, though, delivered a surprise of his own this week when he decided to stick at Pittodrie and Rodgers has some admiration for the manner in which the Aberdeen manager has opted to continue his work with the Dons.

Rodgers himself turned down approaches from West Ham United and Swansea in only the last few weeks, with his own reasons being personal satisfaction with the job he is currently in with Celtic.

In modern football you’re going to have numbers of jobs with that being the way it works,” said Rodgers. “But what I think you can’t discard – and maybe that’s what Derek has thought about – is happiness.

“Sometimes you’re doing well at a club and people tend to think you should move. I certainly know now from my experiences that that can never be the case.

“If you’re doing well in your job then it’s ok to keep doing well. You should never feel you have to move or you have to change job. But if you feel there’s another challenge for you then of course you would think about it.”

Rodgers himself has been in a similar predicament in his own managerial career.

There have been approaches in recent months while at Celtic and there have been other opportunities too at different stages, some of which he regrets taking, so he was cognisant of the way McInnes would have weighed up this week’s formal move from Rangers.

“A number of things go through your mind of course,” he said.

“It’s normally coming when you’re in a good moment. That point of your life you’re normally in a good football moment.

“I suspect you have a happiness in your life which it’s allowing you to enjoy.

“The big question is if you’re going to move it has to be for something that’s worthwhile.

“You don’t always get it right. When I left Watford I shouldn’t have.

“We had stayed in the league, we were in a good moment, we were building. I left to go to Reading because I was in a hurry thinking I could get them to the Premier League quicker.

“That proved to be the wrong move for me.

“When I left Swansea I had the opportunity to go to Tottenham and Liverpool, which is one of the great iconic clubs of the world.

I’d had two great years at Swansea and I think the challenge of going to a club like Liverpool was going to be huge. You never know if you’ll ever get that chance again. At 39 I took the chance to do that.

“It proved to be a really good decision for me because of the experiences and everything I learned from that.

“That period always set me up for the rest of my career.

“You have lots of reasons you have to think about. The key in it all is to try to remove emotion from it.

“I can only talk now having had five jobs as a manager. When you have that experience now you tend to look at it differently.

“You’ve been on that journey to get to what is the big club. Then from that you can make other decisions around your next move.

“There has to be a strategic element to it. Of course there will always be the personal element to it.”