Scottish League Cup semi-final: Celtic 6 Aberdeen 0
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers was delighted with his team after a 6-0 Hampden thrashing of high-flying Aberdeen in the Premier Sports Cup semi-final but disappointed with the person that leaked his team selection.
Rodgers has been aware his starting line-ups have been appearing on social media and the issue became more obvious after he made six changes for both the midweek win over Dundee and Saturday’s semi-final.
Any inside information that reached Jimmy Thelin had little impact given Celtic scored five goals in half an hour either side of half-time before Daizen Maeda completed his hat-trick late on.
But Rodgers said: “It’s obviously clearly disappointing. It’s something that we’ve seen before, and it’s not ideal, however it comes out.
“In the modern game, there’s no real secrets in football. That’s the reality of it. But it’s not nice when it gets out there. And especially if it’s out from Celtic supporters.
“It might feel great for someone’s ego to put it out and pass it on to other people. But I can tell you as a manager that I’ve had that before with other teams. And when I’ve got to know about it, it has really, really helped me in my preparation.”
Rodgers explained he had previously won a game after being tipped off that his opponents were going to change shape and amending his tactics.
“So whoever is putting it out, if it’s someone from Celtic, you’re not a Celtic supporter,” he added. “You’re not a Celtic supporter because you’re not helping Celtic. It’s as simple as that. If you’re not a Celtic supporter, we will do everything we can to find out.
“But for me, I don’t get angry about it. It’s just the modern world now, isn’t it? There’s so much communication. There’s so much out there.
“It won’t dampen our performance and our achievement, which was absolutely brilliant.”
Cameron Carter-Vickers, Kyogo Furuhashi and Nicolas Kuhn also netted from Celtic’s 12 shots at goal, eight of which were on target. Possession was 53 per cent in their favour but they discovered a clinical edge that was missing when they drew 2-2 with the Dons in the league two weeks earlier – when they had 32 shots at goal.
Rodgers said: “It’s a massive credit to the players, their mentality and how ruthless they were in the game.
“What we did speak about, if you let Aberdeen play, then they have the quality to score goals. We’ve seen that all season and none more so only a few weeks ago. I think that you can see that we’ve learned from that, that if you give them time, they can play.
“I thought our counterpressing was really, really good. It got us the ball back a lot. And then, especially in the second half, we passed the ball much faster.”
Rodgers’s frustration with slow play earned him a first-half yellow card from Kevin Clancy when he booted the ball away after a move broke down, falling on his backside in the process.
“To be fair, it was well-deserved – I shouldn’t have been falling over there,” Rodgers joked.
“I think it was because I kicked the ball on the pitch. I bounced up pretty quickly. Probably out of embarrassment. It was a wee bit slippy on the surface with my shoes. But no, it was a good decision by Kevin.”
It was a spectacular first defeat for Thelin after winning 15 of his first 16 matches as Aberdeen manager.
“Sometimes football can be like this, when things start going wrong, it can go wrong really quickly and we didn’t find a way back,” the Swede said.
“I’ve been in football for a long time now and I’ve experienced these situations before. It happened before with the other teams I coach. It doesn’t usually happen game after game.
“It can happen. It’s difficult to explain right now why exactly it happened. And that’s football.
“For me it’s more important how we act now, this week and for the next game. Celtic were at the top. The skill was there, the timing was there. And they used these opportunities when they got them. We need to improve so it doesn’t happen again like this.”
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