Brendan Rodgers

“The word you sometimes get is 'deluded,' they use, but for me, I've always been very positive.”

“I've always been a great lover of Barcelona and the structure of the club.”

“I went in to Reading with the full backing of the chairman, who was great to me, and I got 20 games. Even though it was a three-year project, and I was the guy who knew the club more than anyone, I got the sack after 20 games. Funnily enough, it had just started to pick up, but they lost their patience.”

“One of my strengths is I learn, and I like to learn from all sorts of people in all walks of life.”

“All players, whether they're Spanish, French, English, Welsh, want to play football. To play.”

“What you have in Scotland is an unpredictability with surfaces - and I've already said you don't get good games on artificial turf - and that can affect performances and results.”

“It's very difficult to say that a player is irreplaceable because the nature of football means that someone always steps in to take the shirt and provides different elements to your team.”

“My biggest mentor is myself, I've always felt.”

“When you manage Liverpool, you know the Manchester United job is gone.”

“If you give a good player time, he can kill you.”

“I had a wonderful time at Liverpool. My three and a half years there was a great experience.”

“You can go to Old Trafford as Liverpool manager and get a draw, and it's not a bad result. At Celtic, there's an expectancy to win home and away.”

“I know how quickly it can all change. I nearly won the title at Liverpool, and everybody's saying, 'Sign him up' - then, very quickly, I was out.”

“When you have a son in football like Anton, it will always be deemed as if he got the prop up and given the contract, no matter how hard he works. So much so that when he was offered a deal at Chelsea, I advised him not to take a professional contract.”

“Everything we did on the training pitch, we did with the ball. You'll never see a pianist run around his piano. People ask me, 'Why don't you run through the forest, through the trees?' Well, I've never seen a tree on a football field.”

“All my career I have done that, worked with talents, improving 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds.”

“Refereeing is always an issue where you want to have the best officials, and I think the referees do their very best in the games, but we always want to improve standards across the league.”

“It was important for me, when I left a club like Liverpool, to one, have a breather, but then my next job, I needed pressure. And there's a pressure at Celtic. It's a huge club; there's an expectancy to win every game.”

“A winning model would mean trying to get the best possible players that you can, at whatever age they are; it doesn't matter.”

“I always like the players to be within 10 to 15 metres of each other. When the attacking players try what I am asking them to do, and it breaks down, there are players close enough to then go and win the ball back and counter press the game.”