Brendan Rodgers fires back at 51-years-old pundit Chris Sutton recent criticism on team selection with a brutal message

Brendan Rodgers, the manager of Celtic, has defended one of the recent choices he made about his team that got criticized by well-known commentator Chris Sutton.

The former Bhoys striker raised concerns about Rodgers’ use of young Daniel Kelly in the recent loss to Hearts at Tynecastle. He wrote in his Daily Record piece that it was “no environment” for the 18-year-old prospect who is still developing.

This past week, Kelly played for another thirty minutes against Livingston in the Scottish Cup. Rodgers doesn’t agree with the criticism of his role in the game.

The Celtic manager really likes the young defender and thinks it’s his job to make sure the Bhoys are looking to the future by giving young players from the Academy a chance to show what they can do.

Brendan Rodgers on how Daniel Kelly came up at Celtic

Rodgers didn’t name Sutton by name, but he did talk about the fuss in the media over his use of Kelly at Tynecastle, with the controversial commentator being the most well-known person to bring it up.

“No matter where I am on the field, my focus is always on the young players,” the Celtic manager said in a press conference today [Celtic YouTube]. I think one of the first things I said when I joined the club was that the general goal is to win titles and play attacking football, which is everything Celtic wants. But we want to do it with as many young players from our school as we can.

“That’s hard to do—getting nine or ten players is tough—but this club has always had a lot of really young players.” Then you have to find a balance between thinking that the team should win every game and the other way around.

“I read somewhere last week that we were criticized for adding a young player to the team, which I find hard to believe.” It’s said that what should not have been done was to bring on Daniel Kelly against Hearts.

“Thank goodness I’m in charge of both the short and long term of the club. One thing I do is bring in young players to help them grow and get experience, which will hopefully make them better players because they need it.”

“We hope to be able to do that in the next few years and get those players on to help the team and eventually become first-team players.” That’s something I will always pay attention to.”

Kelly has only played four times for the Bhoys so far, but he has looked sharp and ready to make a name for himself as a backup choice. Every player has to begin somewhere.

To some extent, Sutton’s main point was about having a deep group at a crucial point in the season. This is true, but new players do need to learn how to win tense, high-pressure games at Celtic.

If you want to avoid long-term problems, it’s better to spend minutes on someone like Kelly than to keep someone like David Turnbull around longer than he wants to be.