Brendan Rodgers: Celtic are not given enough credit

Brendan Rodgers believes that Celtic were not given proper credit for following an Old Firm victory at Ibrox with a valuable win against Anderlecht in Brussels because observers stress the weakness of the opposition. The Parkhead manager was clearly irked by what he felt was a devaluation of his players’ accomplishment – and, by extension, his own achievement – when he said: “I’ve had that quite a bit up here.

“When we play Rangers, it’s about how Rangers aren’t what they used to be. Anderlecht aren’t what they used to be, the Scottish league isn’t what it used to be. It’s constant, it’s nothing new.

“We just deal with it. We can only focus on ourselves and just continually look to develop our game and improve. It’s the modern world unfortunately. We don’t look for the credit. We just want to do a good job for the supporters, who travel and pay a lot of money to get out there and for ourselves too, because we’re ambitious and we want to do well. The other stuff, we can’t really control.

“It’s also worth remembering as well that Anderlecht are a team who have virtually double our budget, so to go and deliver that level of performance and with that confidence is great.

“We can’t control it. The only news headline we can write is to win the game. I saw a lot of the stories and lots of the columns on the game and, even in Scotland, a lot of them were very much about how poor Anderlecht were.”

One aspect of Celtic’s play which, however, has drawn universal comment was their tentativeness on the ball in the first half hour or so, despite their command of possession during that time. Only after the 38^th minute, when Leigh Griffiths scored the opener after fine work by Kieran Tierney and Olivier Ntcham, did the Scottish champions threaten consistently.

“Everyone talks about possession but it is no good on its own. You need to penetrate, defend well and create opportunities. When I watched a re-run of the game the other night it was great to see the calmness and the confidence we had to play a high level technical game.

“I don’t know what it does for the rest of Scotland but I do know what it gives us here. It shows the way we have been developing. The incision at the end of the first goal was good. It was a wonderful pass from Olly but it doesn’t get there if Keiran isn’t running. It is important to get through teams without the ball and Keiran has the explosive speed to get there.

“The second and third goals also pleased me and out fitness at the end to have five players in the box in injury time, with the hunger to score.”

Celtic Park welcomed the return of a former favourite, both as player and manager, in the form of Neil Lennon, who brought Hibernian to the east end of Glasgow in hope of ending the champions’ run of 57 successive domestic fixtures unbeaten. Celtic had taken maximum reward from a sequence of three consecutive games on the road in different competitions, in which they had scored nine goals for the loss of none.

Rodgers made five changes to the team which started in Brussels, although one – Scott Brown – was forced by the captain’s hamstring injury. Jozo Simunovic was rested and Patrick Roberts, Scott Sinclair and Leigh Griffiths were on the bench. Callum McGregor, one of the replacements, put Celtic ahead on the quarter hour when he was allowed to proceed unchecked on a run through the channel into the Hibs box, where he collected a pass from Moussa Dembele to tuck a left-foot finish beyond Ross Laidlaw.

With around the same superior share of possession as they enjoyed against Anderlecht, Celtic found chances hard to come by and, indeed, survived two alarms, the first early when Craig Gordon tipped a free kick from Anthony Stokes over the crossbar, then when Martin Boyle beat the offside trap but shot high over the top.

Hibs did find the mark eight minutes after the break, though, when Marvin Bartley found John McGinn for an angled drive past Gordon. Within moments, an outstanding save from the goalkeeper, prevented Hibs taking the lead when he dived to block a point-blank shot from Steven Whittaker on the goal line, but he could not stop McGinn finding the net again, this time with an arcing effort from beyond the box.

The drama, however, was not played out and the final act belonged to McGregor, who kept his composure when Hibs failed to clear a corner kick and, when the ball fell to him 12 yards out, struck home a controlled low volley to make it 2-2.