'The scoreline didn’t quite reflect the game,' Brendan Rodgers

Celtic paid the price for a second half capitulation in Como, suffering a 5–1 defeat to the Dutch giants.

Despite an impressive first half display following notable friendly victories over Sporting Lisbon and Newcastle United, Rodgers is not getting carried away with pre-season results.

However, the Celtic boss conceded that the team must keep moving forward and strengthen the squad before the new season kicks off.

Speaking via Daily Record, Rodgers said: “Yes, it depends what your ambition is. If your ambition is to really progress and push forward, then we need to improve the squad.”

“But I can’t fault the players. The players that are here, they’ve been working so well, so hard and you see some of the play and how they work has been very, very good. However, if you want to progress, then, as I said, you need to bring in quality and that’s something that we hopefully can do.”

Although frustrated by the last 30-minute showing in Italy, the Irishman is not about to overreact.

Rodgers added: “I think the scoreline didn’t quite reflect the game. I think that the first 60 minutes we played a lot of really good football with physicality, we broke through their pressure, scored one, could have had more.”

“I just thought the last 30 minutes, we’ve pushed the players really hard in the pre-season, so it looked a wee bit leggy. But that aside, we should keep the ball better and can be better in duels, so there’s no doubt we lost out on that.”

“Then the two final goals are probably a consequence of that. There were enough really good moments in the game, but certainly the last 30 minutes, we would want to be better. I think that’s the nature of a pre-season. It’s designed to grow and by the end of it, you’ve had really good tests.”

Conor Spence

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