BRENDAN Rodgers last night admitted he would have struggled had Celtic been his first managerial job as Steven Gerrard, his former captain, continues to mull over a move to Rangers.

The Northern Irishman paid a warm tribute to a man who could be up against him next season but that came with a warning that any new manager had to choose the right club rather than take the first opportunity.

Rodgers was uncomfortable talking about the prospect of Gerrard going to Rangers when Graeme Murty was still in the job he couldn’t avoid the subject which has been dominating Scottish football for the last three days.

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Rodgers said: “I don’t comment on speculation really, and I think it’s hugely disrespectful to the guy who’s been put in to help manage Rangers over the last seven or eight months or however long it’s been. I know Steven very well, I know he wants to manage at some point.

“We all, first time managers, when it’s your first time it’s not necessarily about a club, it’s about the right club. That’s important when you’re managing first of all.

“But you have a guy in the role who is doing his very, very best in what has been probably a very difficult situation for him and you always have to respect that.”

Were Gerrard to say yes to Rangers, it would be a huge step up from working at Liverpool’s academy to one of the most demanding and, right now, difficult jobs in British football.

Rodgers turned to coaching at 20 after injury ended his playing career and so had earned his stripes before moving to Celtic two summers ago which would be a very different road to the one a 37-year-old rookie has taken.

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Asked if it would he could have taken the Celtic job as his first. Rodgers said: “It would always be a challenge and there’s no doubt that when you arrive at the biggest clubs, it certainly helped me going to Liverpool that I had 17, 18 years’ experience as a coach and as a manager and then arriving to here with 20-odd years’ experience.

“But like I say it’s all about yourself, really. If you feel ready to do it, whether it’s Graeme, Stevie or anyone else, I said it to Kolo Toure and Stevie at Liverpool ‘if you’re thinking about coaching take your badges three years before you finish and work your way through’. Both of them started at Liverpool and have gone on their separate ways. It’s not easy, the expectations at the big clubs are huge.

“When I took my first job I was coaching for 15 years and I had worked with kids at six years of age right through to the very best players in world football at the time at Chelsea. So I had covered many aspects of football but also all the other things that entail in coaching and development.

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“That was what was going to be important for me in the first steps of management because all the statistics show you that lots of managers get their first job and there is a high percentage, it seems to go up every year that maybe don’t get another chance. It’s all about your own feeling and getting to the right club.”

Rodgers joked that it would be interesting if Gerrard felt the need to ask his former manager for advice over the next few days.

And he added: “Stevie and I were close at Liverpool. I had a good relationship with him, similar to what I have here with Scott Brown. The synergy between the manager and the captain is very important. But I haven’t spoken to Stevie for a little while so it is all speculation. I am sure that the guys on the Rangers board know what they are doing and they’ll go from there.

“My focus is on Celtic. I respect all managers but it is a tough business, football. You look at football management and you see the glory of it but it is a hard business as a player and as a coach and manager. I always have empathy for managers but of course my focus is clearly Celtic.”