Brendan Rodgers won't make meal of Celtic trophy hunt and Matt O'Riley was just being honest about Ange - Chris Sutton

Brendan Rodgers seems to be savouring lunchtimes with the lads.

But I wouldn’t be making a meal out of it. It doesn’t really matter how you approach it. So long as you scoop up all the gravy when it comes to the trophies. I was interested to read the comments this week from Matt O’Riley about a freshness and openness now around the camp at Lennoxtown.

The midfielder was talking about how Rodgers was happy to blend in with the squad during meal times and shoot the breeze. O’Riley suggested it was a change in environment which seemed to hint at the fact that didn’t happen under Ange Postecoglou. There was always this underlying suggestion the Aussie wasn’t really one for mixing with the group on a day-to-day basis. John Kennedy’s interview during the week said as much when he commented on how Rodgers’ approach involved “being around people more socially.”

It got me thinking about how some of my managers from the past approached things. The most obvious one for me to refer to when talking about Celtic would be Martin O’Neill.

Now the situation would have been slightly different back then because we didn’t have Lennoxtown in those days. We’d get changed at Celtic Park and then jump in the cars for training at Barrowfield. Martin was a bit like Ange. He would hardly be around the lads doling out the brown sauce when it was lunchtime back at the ground.

He kept his distance. It was John Robertson and Steve Walford who were around the boys most of the time and I used to like the fact Martin wasn’t matey-matey with all the players. To be honest, no manager I ever played with really sat and had lunch with the players.

We’d have meals in the same room at Blackburn as staff and management Kenny Dalglish and the coaching team on