Former Celtic man Patrick Roberts has named Tom Rogic as one of the earlier influences in his career after marvelling at the Hoops' Australian hero under Brendan Rodgers.
Roberts joined Celtic on loan in 2015 from Manchester City, and having spent a year at Parkhead under Ronny Deila, new boss Brendan Rodgers came to the helm. Roberts was given another year to shine in the east end of Glasgow under the Northern Irishman - and that he did, helping set a Scottish Premiership record points tally in the process.
It says a lot about Celtic's output that season that Roberts was only the club's fifth-top scorer with 11 goals; being beaten by Rogic, Moussa Dembele, Stuart Armstrong and Scott Sinclair, he still made double figures as Celtic romped to a treble and and competed in the Champions League group stages.
But Roberts still learned a lot whilst on the books in Glasgow - and the Englishman has named Rogic as one of his key influences whilst in a developmental period of his career.
Speaking to the Celtic View podcast, Roberts said: "It was fun. It was my first real test and obviously with Broony [Scott Brown], Kieran [Tierney], Leigh Griffiths and Mikael Lustig and the likes, they're all big names and big players and you want to make a good first impression with them.
"Training was always intense. I used to get kicked a lot, Emilio Izaguirre and Efe Ambrose were there and it was quite intense. He [Rodgers] kind of brought that into the club and made every training session count.
"He always used to say to me" 'Train how you play. If you aren't training well during the week then you aren't going to be great on the weekend'. He installed that into every player, no matter who they were.
"He brought that in from the first minute. It was good, the training was good, and when we got to games we knew what we were doing.
"There were a lot of players that stood out - Moussa I obviously knew coming in, Tom Rogic was there a long time. When Brendan came in he really stepped up and I thought he was an unbelievable player for the size he was.
"At the back end of when I was there, especially, he had brilliant feet. All these types of players, you just get to enjoy them. It helps everyone in the squad get the best out of each other."
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