'No flying by the seat of our pants' - Brendan Rodgers on Celtic's hybrid approach for Champions League success against Lazio

A total of ten years and ten outings in their own environs since Celtic last posted a home win in the Champions League, the solution to this sore sequence could never be putting ten men behind the ball for Brendan Rodgers.

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers wants to refine an approach to harness the crowd energy and "spook" opponents to return the club to winning ways in home Champions League games, starting with Lazio. (Photo by Paul Devlin / SNS Group)

The Northern Irishman’s new-found pragmatism in the most unforgiving arena – considered to set him apart from self-confessed purist predecessor Ange Postecolgou – has been played up in poring over his approach to Celtic’s campaign in club football’s elite competition. And perhaps simplistically rendered, as a result, even allowing for the fact that the compact nature of his side in their opening Group E encounter away to Feyenoord last month betrayed the regime change that resulted from his return to Glasgow after the Australian took up the irresistible offer of helming Tottenham Hotspur.

Yet, Rodgers’ first Champions League assignment, second time around, in the club’s own backyard, which brings Lazio to Parkhead on Wednesday night, won’t necessarily see him deviate from his debut in the domain that witnessed his Celtic team go toe-to-toe against Manchester City in the autumn of 2017. That evening possibly provided the last home occasion to conjure in the competition for the Scottish champions, with the English league leaders given an almighty fright across a rollocking, see-sawing confrontation that ended with a 3-3 draw. The 50-year-old is a student of football. He may seek to impress that the financial differentials have become more stretched between the bigger set-ups and the rest in recent times. In turn, altering club’s game strategies when facing modest opponents. Celtic’s rope-a-dope to beat Barcelona in 2012, for instance, appears something of a relic now. But Rodgers promotes a hybrid approach, precisely the sort of middle ground achieved against City six years ago, when Celtic harnessed the electricity generated by a grid-overloading home crowd to snare an early advantage before proving robust enough not to be entirely overwhelmed as Pep Guardiola’s men took a grip. In the modern age, pressing – but not recklessly – is a mode of protecting your own goal and teasing out opportunities.

And Celtic ought to be capable of both against a Roman opponent that has only one win in their past 18 games on the road in Europe. A team that felt the sting of Celtic and Celtic Park in a delicious domain – as all too few have in recent years in enjoying the experience all too much – through losing both away and home to then Neil Lennon’s side as a consequence of late goals in their Europa League meetings of 2019. Those outcomes were pivotal in allowing Celtic to a European group for the only time in the club’s history.

“The elite has moved away from Scottish football economically,” Rodgers said. “But it still doesn’t quell our ambition to get those victories. There have been some really good games here, but sometimes the level of quality has just been better. The team played really well here against Real Madrid [last year] for the first hour and couldn’t score and you end up losing the game to quality. That’s what this competition is, but we will be ready to fight in every game. The recipe for this game is having that bravery to go and show our quality and everything that we want to do and not allow them to do the things they do want to do. If we can do that over the course of this competition then we hope we can give the supporters a win to cherish here sooner rather than later.

“Of course I am a realist and I want to win. You’ve seen in the last decade that teams have gone all in and defended and you still lose. We showed in the first game [in Rotterdam] that we can be a threat. But we know that, especially away from home, we are going to have to defend. And you have to do that and be resolute. But it will never flip to being really sitting low. Sometimes you can get forced into that because quality can push you back. But our whole idea is, I’m not a coach who likes to wait. I like to be proactive in the game, I like to go and make it really uncomfortable. My experiences tell me if you give good players too much time then they will hurt you.

“So the game is simple. Can you deny the opposition space to play and do it as high and aggressively as you can? When you can’t do it high up you might have to do it deeper sometimes. It’s educated pressure really. I just think that each day and each game that has gone by, we’re just improving and developing and that’s what I expect. I’ve not asked too many different things of them to what Ange asked before, but there are certain elements that I bring my own stamp to it. I am an offensive, aggressive, attacking coach – but I like to have control. You know, I don’t like to be flying by the seat of my pants and let it become a basketball game. I like to have an element of control to the game whether it’s with or without the ball.

“Absolutely [there is an onus to get forward and spark the crowd]. That’s what can spook an opponent. You can be a really calm player but I’ve not seen a player who, under real pressure from a crowd and players doubling up against him, copes comfortably with that. The whole idea is to make it as uncomfortable as we can. We have the support, we have a technical team who are understanding the aggression and pressing. And how to do that better. If you can add that these together and then from that – the reason why you do it – is to create chances.

“I think when [visiting] players come away from here, even if they have lost, they know the atmosphere they’ve experienced. They sense it and they feel it. But, for me, it’s not just about the occasion. It’s about the result. When we played Man City here it was a great occasion and a memorable game – but we got something from it. You don’t want to be coming off and not having anything to show for it.”