There was no tantrums or terminado talk and the toys very much remained in the pram.
Brendan Rodgers didn’t quite get want in the January transfer window but he wasn’t going to take a flamethrower to any of the suits at Lennoxtown this time. The Celtic boss did say in advance he wasn’t going to fall out with anyone if his shopping list wasn’t delivered and he was true to his word.
Last time in charge, Rodgers famously let rip after the Hoops failed to secure the signing of John McGinn. Back then he rolled out terminado – the Spanish word for finished – if the club didn’t match his ambition, On this occasion, his chums in Spain might call it enfriado – chilled.
Rodgers might be secretly seething at being left with just Adam Idah as his only senior striker after failing to land a replacement for Kyogo. But if he was was keeping it to himself this time. Rodgers is determined to savour his second stint at Celtic and he won’t let any recruitment malfunctions get him riled up.
He said: “I know the demands of here. I know the ambition that I have for here. I think what’s very, very important is that what you learn through experience is the emotional transfer.
“Because if you have the hump…With the greatest respect, then as the coach and the leader, my leadership style is very much a motivational style where I like to teach, I like to inspire, and I like to motivate. Now, you’ve got to be in a good mood for that, in the main.
“With experience, you learn not to kill your joy over things that you can’t actually control. We’re sat in here now. We can do absolutely nothing about it.
“So I go out that door and I’ve still got the same group of players, which I’m really happy with. Players that tomorrow night if we win our game in hand, we go 13 points clear with 13 games to go.
“We’ve won a trophy. We’re in the playoff stage of the Champions League. “We’ve had a fantastic season until this point. So I don’t want to put any clouds over that there, and take a narrative which is negative.
“It can still be a really, really positive season for us until this point. It’s been outstanding.
“I want to continue with that. We can then go away and say, what can we do better? How can we deal better with that window? But once we do that, we’ve got many games to play and exciting games to play.”
Rodgers was in full diplomat mode at Lennoxtown. It might be more of a red flag to fans than his anger last time around, though.
The Irishman is into the final 18 months of his Parkhead contract and talk about enjoying himself could be seen as being around for a good time rather than a long time. Dithering in the transfer market won’t help twist any arms to stay longer either.
That’s for another day though. And there were some hints that Rodgers might not be listening to any excuses from those upstairs. When asked about lessons to be learned, he said: “I don’t think there’s anything new that sprung up to surprise anyone.
“We understood what we needed to improve the squads. We’re clear on that. Unfortunately, it just didn’t happen for us. There’s a myth around you can’t get good players in January, which I would totally disagree with.
“I think you can. In virtually all my career, I’ve got really good players – some world-class players – in the January window.
“But it’s sometimes about the availability, it’s sometimes about the affordability.
“And then there is a little bit of a premium in January, of course, in this period where you may have to pay a little bit more. But that’s natural. But I didn’t think there was anything too outward to what would hurt us as a club.
“Yes, listen, there’s no doubt the squad is lighter. There’s no doubt. But we’ll work hard, we’ll focus in on this next four months which is a really exciting period for us.”
There’s a lot on Idah’s shoulders now. A sore knee would give Rodgers a headache and even changing things in matches has got tricker. The manager won’t wrap Idaho in cotton wool, but could look to the likes of Daizen Maeda to shuffle across at times, with youngster Johnny Kenny now thrust in to a more prominent role too after being set to go out on loan. On Idah, Rodgers said: “You’ve got to be robust. You can’t want to play every game and then look for a rest.”
And on Maeda, there was even a jokey comparison with the best. Rodgers said: “I actually can see a lot of more natural, instinctive, striker movements that he has and how he plays the game.
“You see his numbers from Yokohama, where he was playing as a striker. He’s a goalscorer.
“He scored a header like Henrik Larsson the other day. He might not do some other bits that other strikers will do and be a traditional number nine. I don’t want to have to do that, but I know that it’s something that we can use him.
“I’m not precious around who scores. I’m not going to sleep worrying about whether the striker’s scoring or not. As long as the team’s scoring numbers and winning games, strikers want to score goals, of course they do, but I’m very comfortable with whoever scores.”
That goes for Wednesday night’s clash with Dundee – who gave Celtic a serous test in the 3-3 draw at Dens last month. Rodgers said: “We were soft in our defending. So, it was a very easy game to analyse. I can absolutely guarantee we won’t be that soft again.”