Brendan Rodgers insists he understands Celtic fans’ frustration at missing out on a striker in the January transfer window.

But the Hoops boss isn’t pointing fingers of blame as his focus is on getting the best out of his squad for the remainder of the season.

Ahead of tonight’s rearranged fixture with Dundee, Rodgers managed to snap up full back Jeffrey Schlupp on deadline day on the back of Jota’s return and teeing up Kieran Tierney for the summer.

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Celtic have been left short up front though after failing to land a replacement for Kyogo. Rodgers admitted his squad is looking light having missed out on top targets such as Mathias Kvistgaarden and Kelechi Iheanacho.

When asked if understood supporters feeling frustration, he said: “Yes – 100 per cent. Listen, I said it myself.

“We wanted another striker, so we’re not hiding behind anything. Absolutely, the supporters will look and see our top striker going out, a legendary striker. And we haven’t replaced him. So I understand that.

“But all I can do is affect what we have now and look to teach and work, and work very, very hard and finish off what has been, until now, a great season for us.

“Could we have done better? Yes, we could. However, as I said, we work with the players that are here now. That is the focus. I don’t really want to be looking back.

“We’ve had months to look at that. We’ve done some good business in the window.

“Like I said, I’m not going to become frustrated now and kill my joy of working here every day at the club by thinking what could have been. We can’t affect that now. We can review it and move on.”

Rodgers also admitted supporters will see the £10m sale of Kyogo as a major mistake by the club when a ready-made replacement wasn’t nailed down.

But he said: “Some people will say that, but you don’t have the depth of knowledge I have on the player and working with him and going back to the summer. It’s a fair enough thing to say.

“You can very easily say you should really have someone in the door before you let him go, but there was a situation with that player which meant that wasn’t the case.

“If a player does not want to be here, then we do the best deal and move on.”

Rodgers was thwarted in his attempts to strengthen but he refused to get riled up or deflect any heat on to the Parkhead chiefs or recruitment department.

He said: “Listen, I don’t want to pin blame on anyone here. I think as a collective, it wasn’t ideal how it ended for us.

“So we’ll look into that and move forward.

“There’s so many different facets to the transfer and obviously the identification of a player, then convincing the player to come, which in the main is never a problem for here.

“But no, we just weren’t quite able to get a deal done on that front. It’s something that we as a club will go away, we’ll review the whole process and then look to be better again in the summer.

“We’ve done some really good business. probably one or two things that didn’t quite drop for us that we would have liked, but we’re here to develop the players that are here for the rest of the season.

“Jota is a fantastic player for us and we can see that even in these early stages. We brought in Jeffrey and I’m delighted to have him here.”

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