‘A big miss’ – Brendan Rodgers bemoans the loss due to injury

Everything Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers told Sky Sports ahead of his side’s Scottish Premiership clash with Aberdeen on Sunday.

How is your squad looking after the midweek exertions in the Champions League?
We’ve recovered and had a good couple of days and a good session this morning so that was good.
Injury-wise it’s not so good as we have got Daizen Maeda as a result of the challenge that he got sent off for has sprained his medial knee ligament.
He will probably be out for up to six weeks which isn’t great.
Other than that we will have the same squad available.
This is going to be a big blow, isn’t it?
Daizen brings a lot of power, energy and effort to the team, right?
Yes.
He also brings quality, he can also create goals and score goals.
This was a great benchmark for the team’s intensity.
We will miss him very much.

What do you think of the reaction after the defeat in Madrid?
How do you see the team gearing up so far in the Champions League?
At first I didn’t see any reaction.
That’s one of the things you do as a manager, with the greatest respect, you don’t care too much about what people think.
It’s about what you value and see for yourself.
I think we started the game really well and played with a real authority in the game that we wanted to play with.
We conceded a poor goal and still right up until the sending off we were the team in the ascendency.
The sending-off was very harsh, to say the least.
Then you see it changes the course of the game.
I just felt in the second half it is what happens when you are down to ten men.
You have to give them credit when you play with ten men, you want to counter-attack well, press well and create the longest throw possible.
The difference in this match was that every shot they took seemed to come from every angle and from outside the box and you were certainly at the bottom of a scoreline that wasn’t huge.
The players in the matches leading up to this match have been very competitive in the tournament.
We didn’t get the score we expected or even deserved.
This is the reality of where we are.
We have two more matches left and we will give our all in these matches.