Martin O’Neill does not believe Celtic’s morale will have suffered any “real serious damage” in the Celta Vigo defeat as they look to bounce back against Hibernian on Sunday.
The 2-1 loss to the Spanish outfit on Thursday night made it three Europa League defeats out of three for the Scottish champions and left them 35th out of 36 teams in the league table.
A week on from their 7-1 demolition of Hearts, Celtic resume their William Hill Premiership quest at Easter Road, and Hoops boss O’Neill said: “We have to recover and we’ll try and get ourselves physically right for the game, which is the most important thing.
“Psychologically, I don’t think Thursday will do us real serious damage. One never knows.
“But it’s a tough schedule for us, the last week has been tough travelling to Portugal (lost 4-1 to Benfica).
“But listen, no excuses. We are what we are and we have to try and win so Sunday becomes a big game for us.
“We have to try and fight back and try and win on Sunday if we can.”
Defender Liam Scales is looking to discard “the pain” of the Celta defeat and bounce back against Hibs.
“You can’t be holding on to kind of pain from games for too long,” he said.
“We know that, we’ve been playing long enough.
“You need to bounce back and be ready for the next game and I felt like that was the case last weekend (after Benfica) and hopefully we can do the exact same this weekend.
“We want to stay top of the league.”
Hibs are bottom of the table and chasing a first win under Marink Reedijk after the Dutchman’s first two matches since succeeding David Gray ended in defeats against Dundee United and Falkirk.
The Hibees are braced for a challenging week, with the visit of Celtic followed by a trip to St Mirren on Wednesday and then a Premier Sports Cup semi-final against city rivals Hearts next Sunday.
Asked if he had seen enough over the past few weeks within games and training to believe that his his team are equipped for such a run of games, former Beveren boss Reedijk bristled: “Of course, yes. Otherwise we call the opponents and we say we don’t go there.
“I see players here who want it, who have the right intention, who work their socks off and make sure that they are ready as best as they can for these matches.
“I see progress in training. I also saw, like I said before, progress in the matches, so, no, I have no doubt that we are ready for these three fixtures to come.
“It’s also a nice opportunity to show yourself again and again and again. That’s important for me so that we are coming out of these matches in a good way from a physical standpoint and that we make sure that everybody can do all three matches and be the best of themselves in those three matches.”