Brendan Rodgers will not thank Blackburn Rovers’ Charlie Mulgrew for sobering Celtic comments

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The Blackburn Rovers defender left Celtic in the summer after six trophy-laden years with the champions.

Charlie Mulgrew may be fighting to keep Blackburn Rovers in the Championship rather than standing one game away from a sixth consecutive Scottish top flight title with Celtic, but that does not mean the defender regrets moving south of the border in the summer.

According to the The Herald, Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers was desperate to keep the long-serving Mulgrew at the club after he arrived in the summer only for the 31-year-old to instead bring an end to his six-year stay in Glasgow.

As it stands, his current club Blackburn are a point adrift of safety and third from bottom in the English second tier with former Bhoys boss Tony Mowbray appointed at the helm last month.

However, Mulgrew insists he is all the better for making the move.

“I feel as if I’ve improved since I’ve been at Blackburn. It’s opened my eyes a bit,” he told the The Herald.

“I’m really enjoying it and I feel more prepared now and that I’m a better player, more experienced. It’s a more demanding league. Every game is genuinely 50-50.

“A lot of the games are more even down there and that was part of the challenge why I wanted to go down. I wanted to be part of that, experience that and grow. I feel it’s improved me as well.

“You have a lot of the ball at Celtic, in most games you’ve got at least 60 to 70 percent possession. So it’s different games, there’s more defending to be done. I’m enjoying it.”

Rodgers may not thank Mulgrew for his admission, however. A number of Celtic’s most important players, from Erik Sviatchenko to Moussa Dembele, have been linked with a move to the Premier League in recent months and, as history shows, the Scottish giants are usually unable to hold onto their prized assets when interest from England arises.

Therefore, it will be a concern that Mulgrew claiming that departing Scotland has taken him to another level may just nudge Celtic’s players in the direction of the exit.