By Celtic's very high standards, the results picked up by the club in recent weeks have not been good enough.
While they would end a poor Champions League campaign on a high with a victory over Feyenoord, they have suffered defeats in each of their last two league games. The 2-1 and 2-0 losses against Kilmarnock and Hearts respectively has seen their lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership shrink significantly, with Rangers now just two points behind having played a game less.
Even prior to this current run, there had been a sense that Celtic were playing poorly despite picking up wins along the way. That lack of form has now come back to bite them.
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Liam Scales admit Brendan Rodgers' Celtic criticism 'hurt'
Brendan Rodgers has not been shy to criticise his players in recent weeks, most notably after the loss to Hearts last weekend. After that game, he summed up just how poorly the team had performed.
The performance today was nowhere near the level of what is expected as a Celtic player and a Celtic team. We lacked any desire in our defending, we lacked that drive and that intensity. I felt like we could have played all night and not scored.
Liam Scales is one player that continued to play relatively well despite the team's struggles, but even he has been hurt by the manager's comments.
Speaking ahead of the game against Livingston this weekend, he admitted that players have been affected by those words and said the team needs to quickly improve in order to reverse this recent trend.
I can see where he’s coming from. It’s not nice to hear but obviously performances haven’t been where they should probably be. He makes a good point.
It does hurt as a player to hear that. We need to change that and not let that be the case again.
We feel like sometimes we expect it to just happen. Just playing at home or against teams in the league, just expecting it to happen without going out and taking it by the horns and being aggressive and going and winning.
We can’t just show up and that’s maybe where we need to brush up...
We know it’s not good enough for Celtic. The pressure is there and you know you need to win games and anything but a win isn’t good enough.
Over the course of a season it’s not disastrous, if we bounce back and do well it should be fine. But it’s been a tough week and we just need to fix it now.
It’s in our hands to turn it around. It’s a minor blip in the course of the season and we need to turn the corner and get over it. It’s not a complete disaster.
Celtic will be hoping to rediscover their form over the festive period, with the club set to play in four league fixtures in the space of ten days up to the start of January.
Liam Scales and his other teammates will be hoping that their manager is not forced to criticise them once again in the aftermath of those fixtures.
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