Former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan has become an unlikely defender of Brendan Rodgers and Celtic following their 7-1 thrashing by Borussia Dortmund in Germany. The outspoken pundit has a lot to say on Celtic and the Scottish game at times and not always positive.
The heavy defeat has once again raised concerns about Celtic’s approach in European competitions, with critics calling for a tactical shift as the Hoops face more elite opponents.
Celtic’s struggles in Europe, particularly in away fixtures, have seen pundits lament the frequency of heavy losses. Many believe these results are becoming “predictable” due to the team’s brave but ultimately flawed tactics when facing higher-calibre opposition. Jordan, however, believes the backlash towards Rodgers and his side might be overblown.
Speaking on talkSPORT, Jordan highlighted the significant financial disparity between Celtic and European powerhouses like Dortmund, who generate vastly more revenue than the Scottish champions. “Dortmund’s turnover is 150-200 million pounds a year, while Celtic’s is around 80 million,” Jordan explained. “You can’t expect them to compete on the same level.”
Jordan compared Celtic’s defeat to similar heavy losses suffered by big Premier League clubs in the past, such as Arsenal’s 8-2 loss to Manchester United and United’s 6-3 drubbing by Southampton. “It happens. Maybe Celtic were too brave for their own good,” Jordan added, emphasising how critical mistakes quickly snowballed in the match.
Despite the scale of the defeat, Jordan remains confident in Brendan Rodgers’ ability to bounce back, citing the Irishman’s quality as a coach. “Brendan Rodgers is a good coach, and he’ll pivot off the back of this and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
Looking ahead, Celtic will need to adjust their game plan before their next European outing against Atalanta, with many calling for a more pragmatic and disciplined approach to avoid a repeat of this painful result.
It’s all well and good calling for a more pragmatic approach taken by ourselves against the bigger guns within the CL?
Yet with only 5 midfield options available within our squad, and all more suited to the more advanced and attacking side of the game?
Then struggling to see how Rodgers can adopt a more pragmatic approach imo?
Even within that 5 midfield options, we are still waiting on McCowan to start a match, especially with fairly limited SPFL game time to date?
We are hardly a team set up to be trying to play out a goalless draw either?
Even when we finalised our 25man squad for CL, always felt that we were at least 1 midfield player short within it?
So we haven’t given ourselves to many, if any, available options to become a more pragmatic team?
Especially as it would possibly call upon a change in formation, and yet a lack of midfield options, isn’t going to make that as easy as it sounds either imo?
In these games with the gulf in money and quality of big CL teams, it seems obvious to most we need to seal up the back. We don’t have any real quality defenders, so the back four need to concentrate on just defending Cal Mac and Mc Cowan sit in front of defence. Engles/Bernardo or Hatate play an advanced role and we aim to soak up the pressure and hit them on counters with Khun, Kyogo and Madea.
Expecting 5 million pound players go toe to toe in an open slug fest with 30 40 million pound players is dumb.
We need a manager with a plan of how to deal with each team on their merit, instead we constantly find guys with one plan and when it goes wrong they have no plan b.
Playing Dortmund with the same game plan as playing Falkirk shows the board just want to appoint a name and not a plan.
Rodgers and Ange have always been one plan and if it fails it’s the players fault.
The door is slamming shut on Scottish team in Champions league and as our co efficient drops, we are a decade away from the Scottish league struggling to compete with the Irish or Swiss leagues.
Hard to believe 20 years ago Celtic were spoken of in the same vein as The big Portuguese and Dutch teams. Both those leagues are far weaker than back then but we’ve fallen twice as far.