{"id":61272,"date":"2025-09-13T08:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T08:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61272\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T08:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T08:22:07","slug":"brendan-rodgers-stands-up-in-front-of-celtic-dressing-room-to-throw-down-a-major-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61272\/","title":{"rendered":"Brendan Rodgers stands up in front of Celtic dressing room to throw down a major challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hoops manager dropped several bombshells and made something clear to his playersGLASGOW, SCOTLAND – AUGUST 08: The Celtic squad applaud Liam Scales on his birthday during a Celtic training session at Lennoxtown Training Centre, on August 08, 2025, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Williamson \/ SNS Group)<\/p>\n

Callum McGregor insists Brendan Rodgers<\/a> is as fired up as ever to keep Celtic on the trophy trail.<\/p>\n

The Hoops manager dropped several bombshells in his pre-match press conference ahead of Kilmarnock tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Rodgers let rip after a dramatic fortnight, branding a back-stabbing club insider a coward who should resign, admitting the transfer window was a failure and revealing he\u2019d love to stay at Celtic<\/a> but still had not been offered a new deal.<\/p>\n

The Irishman had been accused of working his ticket but McGregor<\/a> is convinced his gaffer is as committed as ever.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWhen I see him, he loves the club, he loves being here, I think he loves the intensity of it as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he gets certain people who come alive in the intensity and the pressure of it, and he\u2019s certainly one of them.<\/p>\n

“And like I said, he stood up here this morning and he threw the challenge to the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can see that he\u2019s hungry, I can see that he wants the team back on track, pressing, running hard, playing fast football, so for me, all the signs are there that he\u2019s still really, really motivated to do a good job here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s good, he\u2019s come back in this week, he\u2019s just trying to reinforce what\u2019s good about the team, how the team functions, when we\u2019re at our best, and he\u2019s demanding that from the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s a real hunger there, I think, to really start well at the weekend and then go on a run of performances and wins. He\u2019s throwing the challenge to the players in that sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s really excited about this next four or five weeks especially. Can we start really strong, can we go on a nice little run? And then I\u2019m pretty sure the thing will come to life at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raging Celtic supporters are set to protest at Kilmarnock tomorrow afternoon with a section of fans planning to hold off entering Rugby Park until the 12th minute.<\/p>\n

McGregor admitted he gets the unrest following the failed window but is hoping the rift can be healed.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cObviously I can understand the supporters\u2019 frustration and everybody\u2019s got their own opinion. Everybody\u2019s got the right to voice their opinion. I\u2019ve got absolutely no problem with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this club is far stronger when everyone\u2019s on the same page, everybody\u2019s pushing in the right direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s what makes this club special, is the supporters and how they back the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver a long period of time, we\u2019ve had success because of that as well. So I don\u2019t want us to lose track of all the success that we\u2019ve had and why we\u2019ve been successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to continue that because I think ultimately a club divided is not a good thing for the team and the club.\u201d<\/p>\n

The captain will make sure the outside noise doesn\u2019t damage the dressing room.<\/p>\n

New recruits Kelechi Iheanacho and Seb Tounekti<\/a> are in line for debuts while full backs Kieran Tierney and Tony Ralston are expected to miss out through injury.<\/p>\n

McGregor said: \u201cI think that is one of the biggest jobs, is just trying to remain focused on the team, the performance, how the team structure looks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd ultimately, if we can get that bit right, we\u2019ll then go on and have really good performances and really good results, which will then start to bring the thing back to life again and hopefully move everybody in the right direction.<\/p>\n

\u201dEverybody\u2019s obviously on social media, they\u2019re on their phones constantly, so I\u2019m pretty sure everybody will have seen it. We\u2019ll probably talk briefly about it on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the thing that me and my senior players have to do is set the tone, set the standards, set the level for the group and try and let them not think about it too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to think about performance \u2013 obviously we have to as well \u2013 but us being senior players we can control a little bit more than that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we have to control the energy in the group, keep everybody calm, everybody understands the role that they\u2019re asked to do in the team and as long as everybody does that, then hopefully we\u2019ll be successful, we\u2019ll win games of football and then everybody will start to feel better about themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe job of the players is to bring the new guys together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hoops manager dropped several bombshells and made something clear to his playersGLASGOW, SCOTLAND – AUGUST 08: The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,1191,43605,1187,9574,16512,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,1188,7,8,9961],"class_list":{"0":"post-61272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-brendan-rodgers","11":"tag-callum-mcgregor","12":"tag-celtic-fc","13":"tag-celtic-transfer-news","14":"tag-dermot-desmond","15":"tag-eire","16":"tag-featured-news","17":"tag-featurednews","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-latest-news","22":"tag-latestnews","23":"tag-main-news","24":"tag-mainnews","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-scottish-premiership","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories","29":"tag-transfer-talk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}