TIME is that most precious commodity rarely afforded to managers or players on either side of Glasgow’s great football divide. Defeats at Rugby Park already this season for both Celtic and Rangers have ensured that any hint of a honeymoon period for Brendan Rodgers or Michael Beale at the start of this campaign has lasted about as long as those in your standard Kardashian marriage.
Such have expectations risen even further on the back of the success over the last decade or so at Celtic, that patience is in even shorter supply for the second coming of Rodgers than during his first spell in Glasgow, no doubt exacerbated by the timing and manner of his departure.
It is clear though that his team, judging by the evidence of the first few weeks of the season, are indeed a work in progress. Even when the results were coming in their opening two Premiership matches, the slick, attacking football that is the hallmark of Rodgers’ teams was largely absent. On Sunday, there was no victory to compensate, only a shock exit from the League Cup and the loss of his perfect domestic cup record.
Time and patience then, are exactly what is required. Not only for new arrivals to get up to the pace of the Scottish game, nor for the key personnel currently out injured to recuperate, particularly in the defence where the absence of Cameron Carter-Vickers is a hammer blow. But also, for the Celtic squad to get to grips with the tactical tweaks Rodgers has introduced over the summer as the players transition from Angeball to Brodgeball.
Given just a little bit of a grace period though, and Matt O’Riley is certain that everything will come good, and the midfielder has asked supporters to trust the process.
“It’s going to take a little bit of time,” O’Riley said.
“We have a new manager, a new style and lots of new players with different cultures. So, it’s going to take time. That’s natural.
“Look, we’d like to improve as quickly as possible because there are big games coming up every week. But at this stage it’s always going to be a work in progress for the next couple of weeks. In the coming months I think you’ll see a be a much better team.
“I hope for good things as I feel there is a lot of potential in the team. We’re such a young group when you look at it.
“We have a few experienced players, which is important, but I’m 22 and feel I’m one of the older players in the team now because we’ve signed a lot of young players.
“I just think that’s a good thing and a strength because young players tend to be pretty hungry coming into an environment like this.”
As much as there may be new faces at Celtic this season, O’Riley is keen to stress that everyone in the dressing room fully appreciates the magnitude of the responsibility that is on their shoulders when they represent the club, and their obligation to deliver for the huge fanbase that backs them.
That has been hammered home by the fact that Celtic’s next two home fixtures against St Johnstone and Dundee have already sold out, despite – with the greatest of respect – being perhaps two of the less sexy fixtures on their calendar.
"It’s amazing, very unique in that sense,” he said.
"I think we should all feel pretty lucky as players to be a part of that environment.
"For most of the players in this team, in their career, they are not going to be involved in anything like that ever again.
"For so called smaller teams in the league like St Johnstone and Dundee we are getting 60,000 and that just shows how big the club really is.
“I don’t think people understand the magnitude of the club until they are really up here. You hear things about Celtic and Rangers being really big clubs, but until you are actually here in the city and really feel it I don’t think you can get the same sense of that.
"I know where I am. I think I am mature enough to recognise that playing in front of 60,000 every week is something you can’t take for granted.
"There are people who will never be lucky enough to do that at all, so I think you have to make the most of it every week and the more people you play in front of the more enjoyable it is.
"There is more energy in there and, yes, it’s the most fun I have.”
