They will be adversaries next season but Brendan Rodgers has spoken of the enduring respect he has for Rangers manager Mark Warburton.

Rodgers sent the Ibrox boss a congratulatory message when he took over at Rangers last summer, and he is looking forward to going up against him now as both teams fight for the league title.

The duo crossed paths at Watford in the early days of their respective management careers and Rodgers has spoken highly about his opposite number across the city, days after the Englishman has voiced his admiration of him.

“He is a good guy,” said Rodgers. “I was only at Watford as a short time as a manager. I came in and I was given my opportunity there and Mark was the youth academy director there.

“He was very loyal, very supportive, an excellent coach and he had a good rapport with the players and I am delighted to see how well he has done. He done a really good job at Brentford and I spoke to him at the end of that season when he left.

“He has taken up the challenge at Rangers and I sent him a message when he came here because even he wouldn’t know how big it is here. I am sure in his time here he has realised the size of the clubs up here and the pressures that are totally different from down south. And he has done a good job.”

Meanwhile, Rodgers is optimistic that as he checks into his new role at Celtic Park that the best years of his career are ahead of him.

“I’d hope so,” he said. “Maybe the difference with me is that I was coaching for 15 years before I got my first job.

“Whenever I finished playing I got into coaching very young.

“There’s no doubt you gain through experience. There’s no way that i know everything – I’ll be getting better and better.

“My mindset is to grow and to learn and if you can do that then you become better and I hope that’s the case here.”

And while Rodgers spoke extensively about the emotional attachment he has to Celtic, he admitted that he was pragmatic as he entered initial rounds of discussion with the Parkhead club.

That Dermot Desmond, the club’s majority shareholder pushed the boat out financially to secure Rodgers, speaks volumes of how much Celtic wanted him but there is a feeling that they wouldn’t have got him without that commitment.

“I’m a professional. I have always said that,” said Rodgers. “When I am 70 years of age and I go into a shop to get a loaf of bread I will not be given it on loyalty. I have got to earn the money to buy it.

“So it wasn’t going to be purely on emotion, it was going to be about a professional move.

“Clearly Celtic is a club I love, a wonderful club and family but I was coming in here to speak to people about whether I could be a professional who could really help the club. So I was quite open minded. There was no pressure either way. I was interested to hear about Celtic.”