Charlie Mulgrew has opened up about his abrupt exit from Celtic in 2016 and a memorable training ground battle with Moussa Dembele as he tried to earn a way back into the squad under Brendan Rodgers.

Rodgers had only just taken the reins at the Hoops when Mulgrew’s contract expired. The door wasn’t completely shut, and the new manager expressed a desire to keep the experienced centre-back. However, after turning down the initial contract offer, Mulgrew said he received no further contact from the club as weeks passed.

With pre-season well underway and his own future unresolved, Mulgrew asked to train at Lennoxtown to maintain fitness. Rodgers granted him access, and that’s where the veteran defender found himself thrown into drills with Celtic’s powerful new signing.

Moussa Dembele had just joined the Hoops and wasted no time making his presence felt. Mulgrew, still short of fitness and sharpness, admitted he was blown away by the French striker’s strength and quality during their one-on-one training battles.

He said: (Open Goal), “One of my first days, though. Bear in mind, I haven’t done a pre-season, so I am coming in and Dembele, it’s like a one-v-one drill he (Rodgers) does.

“It’s a finishing drill for strikers. But it’s also for defenders. Just say there are two big goals. You come out, and you go back-to-back with Dembele, and they roll it up to the striker, and you are a defender against Dembele.

“Like, wow, so strong. I just remember lunging about, trying to stop his shots and that, and I couldn’t obviously outpower him. He was so strong.

“After that, I did train well. He took me in to speak to me, but Kolo Toure had signed by that point. This is the good thing about Brendan Rodgers, he doesn’t wait about, he needs to move on because they are trying to qualify for the Champions League, so they signed Kolo Toure, and the budget was done.

“He allowed me to train there until I signed for Blackburn.”

Mulgrew’s spell training at Lennoxtown proved brief but revealing. Dembele, just 20 at the time, was already turning heads with his physicality and technical prowess, traits that would see him become a key player under Rodgers.

With Kolo Toure arriving to bolster the defence and the Champions League qualifiers approaching, Rodgers made a swift decision to press forward with his squad rebuild. For Mulgrew, that meant the door was effectively closed.

Although his Celtic chapter had ended, the manager’s willingness to let him train while in limbo spoke to the professional relationship between the pair. Mulgrew soon moved on to Blackburn, where he enjoyed a lengthy spell in English football.

But even years later, the memory of those punishing sessions against Dembele remains fresh for the former Celt, a sign of just how quickly the new era under Rodgers had begun.