“I have been here before, when it feels like every shot is going in,” Celtic’s veteran defender Mikael Lustig observed yesterday.
“But you still need to work hard and still believe that we are a good defence.
“Sometimes we can do better, like against Athens. Overall, I thought we defended really well, but when they get the chances, they scored.”
From the highs of the admirable Swedish showing in Russia at the World Cup, Lustig has returned to walk into a horror movie of Celtic defensive howlers that has wiped out a Champions League jackpot of £30million.
Lustig accepts the defence has to do better but reckoned offensively we need more goals for the attackers.
“Football is about scoring goals and we need to be better on that,” Lustig noted.
“You have to just believe in the way we have played for the last two years. Of course, it is hard at the moment.
“But if you just think everything is a problem and you don’t want to take care of the ball – and not do the things we know we are good at –then it is going to be hard to come out of it.
“But we need to stay together as a team, as a club, and work from there. We have more or less the same players as last year and last year was quite good. So we still believe in ourselves”
Lustig looked back on the 1-1 draw In Lithuania on Thursday which leaves Celtic well placed to make the Europa League Group stages.
“We had a good start, especially when we scored early. We were quite comfortable, that we were going to win the game.
“But they got their goal, a really good free-kick, so it was 1-1 and we should have scored more goals. It is a good game next week to try to make things better again”.
