Brendan Rodgers makes "less understand me" point as he breaks new ground as Celtic manager and issues Jota update

Brendan Rodgers has reaffirmed his commitment to Celtic, upping his original 150 per cent assurance to 200 per cent as he celebrated the Parkhead club’s latest Scottish Premiership title win after a 5-0 win over Dundee United.

The Parkhead manager advised anyone reading headlines linking him with clubs elsewhere to do so with extreme caution. Rodgers is contracted to Celtic under next summer having made such a surprising and, in the view of many supporters, unpopular return in 2023.

He is now Celtic’s most successful living manager having collected an 11th major honour at Tannadice and can become the first to win three trebles in next month’s Scottish Cup final against Aberdeen. He stressed he is as happy as he’s ever been in two spells at the club.

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers kicks a ball back into the crowd at Tannadice - it was thrown on as apart of a protest by Celtic fans at ticket prices (Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group)

“It's been interesting I've got to say the last few months,” he said. “People deciding where I was supposed to be going and I wasn't happy. But what I can tell you….and I would say, listen to what I say, not what people try to anticipate my mood and what I might be.

"I can tell you...I know I said 150%, but 200% I'll be here for sure next season because we want to build again, we want to grow. But what I'll also say, there's very, very few people that know me and there's even less understand me. So that's a really, really small group of people.

“So when I see all the headlines - I don't have an agent, I don't have an agent spinning a story for me or anything like that – so it's just a guess. So if there's a headline out there, I am telling you, it's a guess. Because there’s hardly anyone who knows what I think and actually understands how I work.

“I am so, happy,” he added. “I came back because of the professional challenge of Celtic, knowing the pressures. My emotional attachment to the club clearly has me here rather than being elsewhere. And just the challenge of being the best Celtic manager I can possibly be. Days like today makes it really special.”

“We're nearly two years into a three-year deal,” he said. I said minimum I would be three years. The big thing with Celtic, it's about having the energy. That's the big thing, and there's lots of other things. Of course, as any manager, you need to feel wanted, you need to feel appreciated.

“You need to feel that you can develop a team, you can develop a club. So there's lots of things that come into it, but I definitely know that we want to finish better than what we did last year. And then I'll go into next year super hungry to beat this year, whatever we end up doing.”

Celtic have now scored more goals than last season and are just four away from the Invincibles’ total of 106, also under Rodgers. “Like you say, we had 106 (that season) and we were on 97 when we started (at kick-off against Dundee United)," he said. "So we're in a good place to challenge that. But also important are our goals conceded. We're even less than last year. If you look at that record, we wanted to beat that 2016-17 team as well, which was very good defensively. So we're on course for that.”

Rodgers also provided an update on Jota, who limped off shortly after Celtic opened the scoring 30 minutes in. He joined the celebrations with his right leg in a brace. “He just felt his knee," said Rodgers. "He’s with the medical guys, we're looking at whether his meniscus is a little bit sore. We'll just have to assess that. Of course, they put it in the brace to protect it. We'll see in the next couple of days.”