Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers vows to stick to his style despite Dortmund thrashing

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers insists he will not change his approach to Champions League games following the team’s 7-1 defeat to Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday.

The bruising loss, which was Celtic’s first defeat of the season, sparked debate about Rodgers’ approach to the game and whether his side should have taken a more defensive stance.

The punishing scoreline was not the first Rodgers and Celtic have endured in the elite competition, having suffered similar defeats to Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain in his first stint in charge, and against Atletico Madrid last season.

While Rodgers admitted that Tuesday’s game had been tough to watch, he resisted the idea that he should change his team’s style going into games against top-level opposition.

“What do we do?” he asked. “Sit back and have 15% of the ball? And probably lose 3-0 or 4-0.

“We’ve seen over the last six months, teams that will come to us and sit back and pay five at the back and 5-4-1, with no chance to attack.

“Or do you play how you play but know you have to sharpen your teeth on the mistakes. You’ve got to be brighter and make quicker movements to close space. All those things are a learning process.

“I would much rather do that and go down with my own vision, than go by someone who has never coached a game in their life or played or done whatever.

“I respect the opinion but I don’t listen to it and never have.”

Rodgers said that he wasn’t “a dreamer” and had always known it was realistic his side might lose.

“I’m experienced enough to know that when the stakes are high and you get high-level competition, that sometimes you have to expect defeat,” he said.

“If you don’t, you’re a dreamer. And if you dream in management, you won’t be in it long. It’s great for everyone to dream, and for critics to look and think what the scores might be.

“But as a manager, at times against the Champions League finalists, you might expect that you might actually lose. But we’ll learn from it and be better for it.

“You can’t turn a tap off and on. If you analyse the game, you’ll see that we were trying to press the game in the static position and then fall back into shape. But that wasn’t to the level that we wanted on the evening. But we play how we play.

“It’s the same performances over the last number of months that allowed us to go into this game with this incredible optimism. You can’t just turn the tap back off and say you’ve become super defensive. That’s not how we play.

Rodgers also revealed that he will be without Cameron Carter-Vickers and Greg Taylor for Sunday’s match against Ross County.

“Cam’s still not available and Greg Taylor will miss the game, he has a slight problem in his calf,” he said.

“We’re hoping Cam will be ready after the international break and Greg will probably not be too far after that.

“(Carter-Vickers) is putting his weight on it and it’s easing off. It was just time he needed.”