Brendan Rodgers opens up on Celtic's Boxing Day boost, no winter break and injuries

It is a heavy schedule by any team’s standards. Manager Brendan Rodgers admits that he was a fan of the winter break in Scotland – Celtic would often head to Dubai for a recharge – but this season, the first two weeks of 2025 will be spent grinding away at home.

Celtic’s next rest comes in March when the international break comes along. Rodgers is at pains to point out that no team can keep up their maximum performance levels in such an environment. Whether we will see more stalemates for the Premiership champions remains to be seen, but their manager admits that his whole squad will need to be used during a taxing period, starting against Motherwell at home on Boxing Day.

“There is no winter break this year and that is what I loved about Scottish football,” said Rodgers. “It used to be amazing to have that break. It still is amazing here but we don’t have that rest period now. March is the next break for the players and we just need to keep grinding away.

“We need to stay focused and the boys have been brilliant in that sense. We would all love to play 90 minutes of high-intensity football in 60 games a season. But that’s not humanly possible.

“Sometimes you just have to grind out the wins and more often than not, this team have done that. We didn’t manage to do it on Sunday but took our point and now we move on to Motherwell.

“It’s a busy period in the football calendar and we have to recover quickly between games now.”

There are no complaints from Rodgers, however. He knows this comes with the territory of being at Celtic. “We have to prepare well and do our analysis,” he said. “A lot of work goes into getting ready for all the games but we are used to it now. That is life at a big club when you are a player and manager. But look, we will enjoy it.”

Rodgers was without his main centre-half duo in Cameron Carter-Vickers and Auston Trusty due to illness at Dundee United and while their deputies Stephen Welsh and Liam Scales contributed to a clean sheet, the American pair are in line for a return against Motherwell.

“Cameron and Auston should be back,” added Rodgers. “They did some work on the bike on Sunday and all being well they should be available. We have so many games and we will need everyone available.

“It’s been a long time since Celtic played at home on Boxing Day and that’s great for the support and the players. It’s also good for the families as we tend to be travelling away to a hotel on Christmas Day and that wasn’t the case this year. We still trained in the morning but the players were able to go home after that.

“It will be a similar game to United on Sunday. Motherwell will be tight, they will stay compact and it’s up to us to go and break them down. That’s the area we need to improve on from Sunday.”