Brendan Rodgers 'most ready I've been' taking Celtic into Champions League

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers says he’s never felt as ready for a Champions League challenge in his time in charge of the Parkhead club.

The Scottish champions begin their campaign in the revamped competition with a home match against Slovan Bratislava on Wednesday night.

Rodgers and his players go into the game after a record-breaking start to the league campaign, where they have five consecutive wins without conceding a goal, and with the manager happy to have strengthened his squad over the summer.

The Northern Irishman feels the preparations have been ideal and the team has benefited from having avoided the stress of qualifiers by going directly into the league phase.

“There’s no doubt that this feels like the most ready I’ve been as a Celtic manager coming into a Champions League campaign,” he said.

“Because of the qualification campaign (in previous years) and the doubt and trying to get players in on the back of that.

“Last season was coming in and trying to find out about players and managing them through that, seeing them in the competition.

“Having had a year under my belt since coming back and seeing the players and being able to improve, though there are still areas that I want to improve, certainly the readiness is a great word.

“The feeling arriving at this first game is probably the best since I’ve been here.”

Celtic’s strong start to the season means they have been made favourites with bookmakers to win the tie, and progress in the elite competition is likely to be dependent on strong results against the lower seeds.

Regardless, Rodgers said he wasn’t feeling any extra pressure ahead of the opener.

“Not really,” he said. “We cope with pressure every week. That’s what being a Celtic player or Celtic manager is.

“There’s no change in that aspect and my job is to regulate that pressure for the squad and allow them to express themselves and play.

“We thought about what we wanted to achieve in the summer. We go into this first game, we’re at home, and we want to start off with a really good performance and get three points.

“We’ll be bringing the energy and intensity to the game to make that happen.

“But pressure’s a part of the job.”

The Celtic boss was also keen to dismiss any suggestion that his side’s Slovakian opponents wouldn’t present to tough a challenge.

“We come into every game and respect every single opponent that we play,” Rodgers said. “Obviously, there will be a narrative around this game, which I totally get, but I look at Bratislava, and I only have to look through my own experiences here, they’ve had eight games, four ties to actually get to this stage.

“So the amount of work and fighting spirit they’ve needed to have to reach this level, you can never ever underestimate that.

“For some, it might not be fashionable; there might be other teams with bigger histories and bigger clubs, but for us, we know it’s a team we have to really respect, but we also know that we are playing at home.

“We’re in a really good mood, playing well, intense, being consistent and we just want to take that and bring that energy to the stands and hopefully we can have a really good night, but we know we have to work hard.”