As Brendan Rodgers steps into his first derby game against Rangers, his eye isn’t just on the fixture but on the bigger picture.

Welcomed with open arms when he was first unveiled at Celtic, Rodgers’ popularity did not necessarily require that he hit the ground running at the club.

Yet, steering the club into the group stages of the Champions League has assured him the chance to lay successful foundations, even this early in his Celtic managerial career.

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However, his aim is leave a lasting legacy at the club among the Hoops support, in particular an appreciation about the way he wants his teams to play football.

“I think they probably see me as one of their own,” he said. “And all I am here to do is service them. This is a club for the people, for the supporters.

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“People travel from all round the world. They go on mini-buses, fly on planes from all round the world. My job is to inspire them. And in my time I am hoping I can do that.

“My legacy here hopefully will be the feeling I can give people. People talk about a legacy on the outside. The legacy I hope I can leave here is a feeling inside. That’s important.”

As Rodgers gears up for a monumental week in which he looks to set the tone of the domestic season against Rangers before heading to the Nou Camp, he has acknowledged that he came to Glasgow because of the allure of the club.

The Northern Irishman had offers to stay in England – a league he describes as the most competitive and the world, to the extent he feels that if he had been working elsewhere he would already had a trophy-laden managerial career.

Rodgers did not win a trophy throughout his three year spell at Anfield, although he took Liverpool to within a whisker of winning the title.

“The Premier League is the most competitive league in the world,” he said. “There’s no question about that. For me it was about the club. On a different scale, you could say that about other leagues. If you look throughout Europe, at maybe Italy, Spain, you’ve only got two or three teams and those teams will win.

“If I worked at Barcelona I’d have won a trophy by now, no question about that. But in the English Premier League, where the British managers are being judged and measured, it’s very, very tough. And what you’ll have this year in the Premier League are some really, really good managers, who have good CVs abroad, who won’t win a trophy. If that’s a British manager, they’d be deemed not so good. It’ll be interesting to see.

“I came here because of Celtic, it wouldn’t have mattered what anyone said. Whatever league you’re in, it’s competitive. Yes, the Scottish league isn’t the Premier League, but the Italian league isn’t the Premier League and the Spanish league is not the Premier League. You know? I came here to Celtic, to one of the biggest clubs in the world. You’ll see that on Saturday, you see it in European games, we’ve seen it over history. And, as I said, I’m delighted to be here.”

Like Liverpool, there is a weight of expectation at Celtic, something Rodgers is keen to deliver on.

Arguably, where he will be judged the most is not in what he does in the league – against Rangers or otherwise – but what he can do in Europe.

“At Melwood with Liverpool you used to walk in every morning and the European Cup was sat there,” he said. “You walked past it and thought, ‘I’d better be good today. And there were another four of them in the museum…

“And then you walk in here and walking around Celtic Park and seeing the European Cup in their trophy cabinet as well, you say, ‘right, I’d better be good here….”

Celtic go into today’s game as overwhelming favourites. The manner in which the Parkhead side have started the season, the pace they have in their team and the way in which they have went for the jugular from the off suggests that they have it within them today to clock up a comfortable scoreline.

And while it may be seen as just another three points on a journey to a sixth successive title, Rodgers would like to make a statement about how Celtic plan on going about their business domestically.

“It’s a good chance for us to put our marker down early on and then that will be four really good teams in this league we have played against,” he said. The measure of how far we have come in the last four months.

“That has been the nature of our team. If you look at the stats and the numbers around I said that the hallmark of this team would be how they start games.

“That’s something that is important for us. Listen, we would all love to saw we have a way of working and a way of playing.

“We would all love to say we can play that way and win. But we have to win the game. Performance is important and your idea of football is important. But of course these are games you want to win.”