As a man who has tamed his inner chimp – dip into Professor Steve Peters’ self-help tome ‘The Chimp Paradox’ which is so favoured by Olympic athletes and the like for an explanation – Brendan Rodgers, the Celtic manager, tends to shy away from the hyperbolic.

As Motherwell have banged on the cage this week, Rodgers has, well, not given much of a monkey’s for the white noise that has provided the backdrop for this final part of a controversial trilogy.

“There are always emotions after games, especially when you lose a cup final, and that’s why I never go too strongly about what people are saying,” said Rodgers. “When the chimp calms down and you get the human side, it’s all OK. I try never to provoke the chimp. It’s all raging inside you!”

In contrast to Rodgers’ measured responses, Motherwell have gone a little ape in response to what they see as two miscarriages of justice.

It has been a week of recrimination and finger pointing with the Fir Park side seeking explanations from Tony McGlennan, the SFA compliance officer, for the decisions made by officials although one has to wonder whether their own hand is undermined by the fact they did not appeal the dismissal of defender Cedric Kipre in Sunday’s Betfred League Cup final.

Celtic captain Scott Brown chipped in with his own take this week as he accused Motherwell of hyprocrisy given his view that Louis Moult dived in the build-up to the Fir Park side’s goal on Wednesday evening, while he was also furious at the coins and missiles directed towards the Celtic players.

Perhaps some light reading this weekend could brighten the mood.

Rodgers, though, has maintained that relations between himself and the Fir Park management team remain cordial and he is unperturbed by the column inches and back pages that have dominated the domestic landscape this week. As such, he sees no reason to view this afternoon’s game any differently than a run of the mill league outing on home soil.

“There is edge and pressure around every game that we play,” said Rodgers.

“There is no more and no less - we play to win, we want to play well and we want to get three points.

“I don’t know what they expect but for me there’s nothing in it.

“To me, I haven’t seen any big reaction. There were only 9000 supporters there so they make their noise, it’s a nice little atmosphere but there’s no drama for us.

“Obviously Motherwell feel hard done by and they are enthusiastic on the sides where they kick every ball and challenge every decision.

“We want intensity in our game but we have to play with a calmness and I need to be calm on the side to ensure the messages are right. But there’s nothing to take out of the game, we want to be competitive.

“We had a good chat with the staff after the game and there was no issue. I’ll repeat that I think Stephen [Robinson] has done an excellent job there, got them highly motivated and committed. Yeah, they play totally different to us but the players, having seen them closely over the last two games, seem a good bunch of guys who want to work.

“They are no different to us in that they are a really good honest group of players who are playing in big pressure games every single time they play - and their behaviour and how they cope with that is excellent.”

There is an argument to suggest that Rodgers will have other things on his mind this weekend as Celtic also cast an eye towards Tuesday’s conclusive UEFA Champions League game against Anderlecht.

With a 3-0 win over in Brussels, the door to the Europa League is ajar for the Parkhead side and although Rodgers has that game in his mind, he is wary of disrupting the fluency of his side.

Patrick Roberts will miss the game after a hamstring strain sustained on Wednesday night while Moussa Dembele is still carrying a knock from the Betfred League Cup final at Hampden.

Avoiding defeat would stretch Celtic’s unbeaten run to an iconic 67 game sequence, with an interesting footnote being that the Parkhead side have scored in every one of those games.

There will be little element of surprise this afternoon given the regularity of the games this week and Rodgers is keen to maintain a level of performance, regardless of personnel.

“We have to look at it, for sure,” he said, in terms of also thinking about Anderlecht. “It’s important for us to win but I’m also conscious that over the course of the season we’ve won all of our games away from home, apart from Wednesday when we drew in Motherwell.

“At the times I have made changes a lot of them have been when we’re at home and we’ve drawn games there. So I’m conscious that we have 60,000 odd supporters, the majority of which is ours, so I want to entertain them. I don’t want to use the home games as the one where there’s a comfort and we can make too many changes because we have an obligation to entertain the supporters.”