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News
‘Biggest disappointment’… Brendan Rodgers pinpoints where it went wrong as Celtic suffer first league defeat of the season
Celtic’s first loss of the season comes after Brendan Rodgers thought he had seen his side turn a corner after the 4-1 win over Hibs midweek.
A halftime rollicking at Perth saw a poor first-half Celtic performance turn into a 3-1 win at McDiarmid Park and Celtic followed that up with an impressive win against Hibs at Parkhead.
However, today at Rugby Park, Celtic capitulated and surrendered a 1-0 lead as Derek McInnes’s side ran out 2-1 winners after a late strike saw the Hoops drop all three points.
Brendan Rodgers was despondent and lamented his team’s failure to deal with a relentless Kilmarnock press that in the end, was his team’s downfall.
Brendan Rodgers deeply unhappy at Celtic’s loss at Kilmarnock
The Celtic boss believed that his team should have capitalised on their first-half performance and said that Kilmarnock deserved a lot of credit for their performance and that he needs to hammer home to his players the importance of dealing with a high press.
Rodgers said [], “Performance first half was very good. We scored a very good goal, could have scored a few more. Our speed and intensity was good and I was pleased with that. Second half, we never got started.
“Instead of playing our game, we played the game Kilmarnock wanted us to play. We weathered a wee storm first 10/15 minutes, which you’d expect, but we got rid of the ball second half instead of passing it and that meant we couldn’t sustain any pressure.
“We were then undone by an own goal and a second goal which we failed to defend well enough.
“You have to be press-resistant, you have to be able to deal with that pressure if a team is coming on to you or pressing you. You have to be able to manipulate the ball and combine and figure that out. That was the biggest disappointment.”
“We didn’t do those ugly parts of the game where you’re trying to win the first/second balls.
“You have to do that no matter how good a football team you are. And we didn’t win enough of those in the second half and play the football we wanted to play.”
Rodgers now heads into the Feyenoord game with a team clearly lacking in spark, possibly confidence and creativity as they once again let Rangers close the gap at the top of the table.
In other news, ‘Outfought and outrun’… Chris Sutton’s damning verdict as Celtic lose at Kilmarnock