Brendan Rodgers should be granted leeway by Celtic fans despite his side's 7-1 humiliation in Germany this midweek.

That's the view of former striker Chris Sutton, who believes that while his old club were well beaten by better players, they at least tried to approach the game with a positive mindset.

The pundit insists that if a repeat of this heavy defeat occurs again in the Champions League under the Northern Irishman - with previous losses to the like of PSG, Barcelona and Manchester City on his watch - then that's when he should come in for some flak.

He wrote in his Daily Record column: "Brendan Rodgers does not deserve a caning for taking a positive approach into Dortmund.

"But he will if the offence is repeated and that begs the critical question: What comes next?

"It’s obvious Rodgers’ preferred way was stripped apart by Borussia and, for my money, Callum McGregor hit the nail on the head.

"The captain admitted that, within their learning curve, Celtic need to realise that when a game is getting away from them, they have to shut up shop for a spell to get through turbulent times.

"That, for me, is the key aspect from Tuesday to be acted upon.

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"Losing by 7-1 is an embarrassing scoreline for any team and player. I speak from experience having suffered the same playing for Norwich against Blackburn back in 1992. It stung. Painfully. You don’t want it ever again and there have to be lessons from the way it ran away from them in Germany.

"In terms of Rodgers' approach, again, I stress there’s nothing wrong with having an identity and philosophy, but there’s also nothing wrong with amending it to suit a scenario.

"I was at Villa Park on Wednesday and watched Unai Emery’s approach to beating Bayern Munich.

"That’s an English Premier League team spending vast sums of money, but it was 4-4-2 and the full-backs barely moved out of their own half.

"Struggling to beat an aggressive man-on-man press, they ended up just thrashing balls over the press trying to hit Ollie Watkins.

"Thirty-six per cent possession, yet a famous victory.

"There are levels in football and Emery felt he had to go that way to overcome a higher power.

"I sat at the Champions League final just five months ago and Borussia were better than Real Madrid for the first half. They have far-superior players to Celtic. That’s just a fact.

"Going forward, there has to be an acknowledgment there are better ways to try to combat superior opponents than my old team displayed in Dortmund."