BRENDAN Rodgers tonight admitted Celtic will get punished by Dinamo Zagreb in their Champions League match in Croatia on Tuesday evening if they give away as many chances as they did in their 3-0 win over Hibernian.
The Scottish champions increased their lead over Aberdeen at the top of the William Hill Premiership table to nine points thanks to an Arne Engels strike, a Joe Newell own goal and a Kyogo Furuhashi effort at Parkhead this afternoon.
But the visitors created several scoring opportunities early on and the final outcome could have been different if Mykola Kukharevych and Newell had shown greater composure in the final third.
Rodgers, whose keeper Kasper Schmeichel was named Man of the Match at the end of the 90 minutes, attributed the below par defensive performance to the five changes which he made to his starting line-up.
However, the Northern Irishman confessed that his side were far from their best at the back and acknowledged they will have to do better in their league phase encounter with Zagreb in the Maksimir Stadium in midweek to get the result they want.
“I was delighted with the win,” he said. “It was our third game this week and in midweek we had a tough game away from home. So to come here and get the victory and keep a clean sheet was great. Our attack and general play was very good.
“But defensively, for our standard, we were nowhere near it. It was not the level that I would expect and want. Sometimes that's part of it when you do make the changes so that's on me. But that defensive side, which is our start point, wasn't so good in the first half.”
Rodgers added: “It was much better in the second half. We controlled the game, upped it to a level. Our third goal comes from a counter-press from James [Forrest]. He blindsides the press and that's more like how we've been.
“We were losing too many balls on the right side. So in order to push them back, you've got to retain the ball. James [who replaced Nicolas Kuhn at half-time] is probably the best player I've ever worked with in my career at retaining the ball on the side.
“People will look at it and say, ‘It's because of maturity’. No, he did that I was here in 2016. He is the best player at receiving the ball on the side of the pitch when it's tight, left side or right side. Then that allows you to sustain the attack. Too often we gave it away in the first half.”
Asked if Celtic would be punished if they give Zagreb the same number of chances on Tuesday night, he said, “Yeah, there are always things to improve on our performance. If you watch us through the season, you see we haven't been like that. It's not been the case. The main principle for me always to begin with is pressing.
“That's why we've only conceded the low number of goals that we have. But if you're just that little bit late to the press, you're not quite there or in the duel, and you lose out then teams can hurt you. So we've seen that more in the first half than the second.”
Celtic have a massive week ahead of them – they play Zagreb in the Champions League on Tuesday night and then they take on Rangers in the Premier Sports Cup final at Hampden on Sunday.
But Rodgers, whose charges have now gone 30 games undefeated domestically in all competitions, is looking forward to the challenges which lie ahead after seeing his men increase their Premiership lead from four to nine points in the space of four days.
“It's part of the process here,” he said. “To get through today was a big win. You see the energy of Hibs in the game, the running power they had and how hard we had to work for that. As I said, we had a tough game in midweek.
“So now we recover and the opportunity is fantastic for us. We're really excited by. We've got three games left in the competition and we know what we want to achieve. So I'm really excited.
“We'll be able to recover players. So, we'll have a freshness to our game also. And we know that at this level we can be really competitive. So, I'm really looking forward to it.
“The lead in the league is irrelevant in December, but it's still nice. Again, we just keep chipping away. The squad and the team are in a really, really good place. We keep our standard of performance. It's something that we always look at and drive at.”
