Celtic brushed aside St Mirren on Sunday to maintain their 100 per cent record to the domestic season.
They done that without star midfielder Matt O'Riley, who looks to have played his final game for the Glasgow club. The Danish internationalist is on the verge of a £30million transfer switch to Brighton and has jetted down south to finalise the move this weekend.
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers understands that there's no doubt O'Riley will be missed, yet he knows that the Scottish Premiership leaders have enough quality to share the responsibilities around, just as they showed by Callum McGregor, Reo Hatate and Alistair Johnston netting during the 3-0 rout of St Mirren at the SMISA Stadium.
"A player of that quality will always be missed," Rodgers said post-match on O'Riley's absence.
"But I think our reliance is always with the team. We never leave the burden to just one player. Everyone contributes, like you say with the goals, it's the same with defending, everyone pressing synchronised and how they work, but of course it's very important that you have that synchronisation when you had the ball.
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"Matt is a brilliant player, a wonderful player for this club. I really had a great pleasure and privilege to work with him over this past season or so and seeing that development. He's moved on, fantastic for him, but there's opportunity now for other players to come in and play for this great club."
Asked how much of the O'Riley transfer fee he's likely to spend before Friday's deadline, Rodgers fired back while reiterating his commitment to bolstering the squad further.
"That's a question that you don't even need to waste your breath on," he replied. "We will find players and we will bring players in hopefully.
"We have to see what we can do in the market but what I do know is, come next Friday we will have improved the squad."
