Craig Gordon has admitted there was “about two days” this season when he thought he would need to quit Celtic in order to get back to playing first-team football.
The Celtic goalkeeper found himself out of the team following the arrival of Dorus de Vries at the club just as the Parkhead side booked their entry into the UEFA Champions League group stages.
Gordon played his part in helping Celtic to qualify for the tournament only to then find himself on the outside looking in as De Vries took his place between the sticks.
Fearing that Brendan Rodgers didn’t fancy him, Gordon admitted that he thoughts his days at Celtic were numbered.
“That was the obvious first reaction and then after about two days I thought – ‘let’s do something about it,’” said the keeper.
“Everything was the same as it was when I had my injury it was a case of let’s do all I can and if it doesn’t work then fine.
“It was back to the drawing board to do all I could do to make myself available for selection to get back in and if I do get back in take my chance. But if I didn’t then at least I’d know I had done all I could to make that happen.
“I’ve been enjoying it here. It’s been great. The manager has come in and the place has got a big lift. We’ve played some great football, scoring a lot of goals. It’s been good to be part of and I didn’t want to lose that.
“I didn’t want to throw it away, I wanted to give myself every opportunity to get involved and be part of it.”
Gordon admitted that he wasn’t the easiest to be around for that short spell, although it was his attitude to knuckle down and get onto the training ground that helped him to get back in.
“You’ve got two choices, what are you going to do about it?” he said. “There is only one choice I was ever going to make and that was to work as hard as I possibly could.”
An injury to De Vries at half-time in a game against Kilmarnock handed the gloves to Gordon again – and the keeper hasn’t looked back since.
In fact, Gordon has not lost a domestic goal from the moment in which he got back into Rodgers’ side.
He has worked to implement the changes that the Celtic manager has asked of him but that has not come through compromising the basics of keeping the ball out of the net.
Gordon had one outstanding save this week to deny Luis Suarez in Celtic’s 2-0 defeat to Barcelona, and he believes that since making the changes to his game that Rodgers has insisted he implement into his game.
“I’ve probably got more now than I had then. Yeah, I would say so,” reflected Gordon. “The game has changed. It’s not the same game, even for the guys down in the Premier League now. The demands are even higher now, they are different.
“You could get away with just being a shot-stopper and kicking the ball away. For most teams now, that’s not enough.
“It is quite complicated now, but that’s better. The days have gone, well certainly here, of just standing around and kicking the ball up the park.
“When I was younger, you just kicked it into an area, everyone crowded into that area and then you fought for the second ball.
“That is still a tactic which is used at times. But here there is a lot more to it. The manager is no in-depth with the movement he is looking for off the ball, getting people into different areas.”
Rodgers subscribes to the modern theory of having 11 football players in a team rather than ten players and a goalkeeper and Gordon has explained just how hard he had to work at that.
However, he believes he is a better goalkeeper for the changes that he has made to his game.
“I knew that would be the case before I even came back for pre-season training, from knowing the way the manager’s teams have played in the past,” he said. “It was something throughout pre-season that I was trying to work on, although the manager came in and was trying to get the whole structure, everything, in place the way he wanted.
“I maybe didn’t exactly know how he wanted it to be done but over time and the more we’ve worked at it and the more I’ve studied different teams and different goalkeepers and how they do it, the more accustomed to it I’ve become. It’s about having the knowledge and once I gained that knowledge about how he wanted it done it was easier to put it into practice.
“I knew that would be the case before I even came back for pre-season training, from knowing the way the manager’s teams have played in the past. It was something throughout pre-season that I was trying to work on, although the manager came in and was trying to get the whole structure, everything, in place the way he wanted.
“I maybe didn’t exactly know how he wanted it to be done but over time and the more we’ve worked at it and the more I’ve studied different teams and different goalkeepers and how they do it, the more accustomed to it I’ve become. It’s about having the knowledge and once I gained that knowledge about how he wanted it done it was easier to put it into practice.”
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