Judge us in May not now, says Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers

Brendan Rodgers insists Celtic will not press the panic button after their Europa League defeat by Salzburg and should be judged at the end of the season.

Brendan Rodgers says nobody at Parkhead is panicking over Celtic's disappointing start to the season. Picture: SNS.

The double Treble winners suffered a 3-1 loss in Austria on Thursday night, while on the domestic front they trail Premiership leaders Hearts by six points.

Following their second league defeat of the campaign at Kilmarnock two weeks ago, Rodgers said his club’s supporters should be “alarmed.” But when asked yesterday whether there was a fresh message to the fans, the manager was dismissive of the suggestion.

“We’re at the end of 
September, early October;
there’s no message,” he said. “We’ll continue to work. If there is any message it’s: ‘Judge us in May.’

“There’s nobody panicking in here. We lost a game against a better team [Salzburg]. They were the better team so just focus on our next game and stay calm.”

He added: “When you lose the players that we have then of course it will make a difference. It isn’t just Moussa [Dembele] we’ve also lost Stuart Armstrong’s goals and his running ability and we had Paddy Roberts leaving as well. But we have to continue to work. We have to look to find the answers.”