Simon Jordan has emerged as an unlikely Brendan Rodgers ally as he defended the Celtic boss’ “foolish bravery” against Dortmund.
The Premiership champions were on the wrong end of a 7-1 thrashing in their first Champions League away clash, with Dortmund going in 5-1 up at the break following a nightmare first half for the Hoops. It’s the third time Rodgers has seen his side ship seven in the competition and comes less than a year after a 6-0 drubbing by Atletico Madrid last season.
That’s led to accusations of Rodgers refusing to learn tactical lessons when coming up against top tier teams. TalkSport co-host Jordan never normally misses a chance to go after Rodgers, but Jordan offered context to the mauling in front of the Yellow Wall with the damage done in a wild 20 minute spell that left the manager without many options in trying to salvage some pride at half time.
“If you’re in the dressing room, bank up and accept a 5-1 defeat because you’re going to get slaughtered for losing 5-1 so how do you approach the second half?” he asked. “The result is you get beat 5-1 and you’re going to get slaughtered for getting beat 5-1 . If you get beat 6-1, you’re going to get slaughtered and you get slaughtered for 7-1.
“Our criticism is that Brendan Rodgers was brave. Foolishly brave perhaps, so we would rather our managers not be brave, make a mistake and then pivot off that mistake. You look at that Dortmund team who have just been smashed 5-1 by Stuttgart and Celtic would’ve fancied themselves in this game. And so they had a go and get caught in a helter skelter moment of 20 minutes inside a game when they concede four or five goals.
“So I look at it and you can catastrophise it if you want and we can take it back to the past, but who cares whether Celtic won the European Cup in 1967? Preston won the FA Cup in 1800, does that mean they’ve got win in now? It’s irrelevant. There’s nuance as well. We can look at it and say Celtic got beat 6-0 by Atletico Madrid, but they got a man sent off within 20 minutes. So we’ve got to give some context to some of these results.
“They played Atletico Madrid at home two weeks earlier and drew 2-2 then went to their place and got beat six, but had a man sent off in the first 20 minutes. When we context these things, we do have to give nuance to it.
“Celtic fans are saying tactical naivety is a theme here but they’ve also been saying they want a good outcome. They go after a good outcome and they get unwound. And they get unwound in a 20-25 minute period during the game the the rest of it is gone after that. Then they’ve got something to say.”