As he calls for focus to ensure qualification

Europa League group the club are aiming for, they don’t want to miss out. Even when Celtic win they tend to send their supporters through the wringer – at least it’s never boring.

Gordon said: “It’s been the same for quite a period now, especially in the early stages of the season.

“I remember going through a qualification campaign for

want to have European football in September and it’s something we have to fight for over these next two games.”

What happened in Athens hurt but it would do nobody any good if the manager was still smarting from it.

“It’s gone now,” he added. “Naturally there’s disappointment of course. You come back and you reflect on that.

“And of course there is the Champions League without any centre-halves. Nir [Bitton] was playing there. Kris [Ajer] did in one of the first games after dropping back from midfield.

“We’ve had to deal with these things. It’s not a new thing and we’ll continue to do so until we get settled.”

The Celtic goalkeeper added ahead of tonight’s Europa League play-off round

always noise around it but the important thing was to win the next game, no matter who was against or the competition. It was important to win. I think it also shows the level the players have been at, that that was the first time we had lost back to back games.

“That really shows you the consistency of the team. You have to take that at times it’s not always going to be plain sailing, you take the qualifier first leg against Suduva in Lithuania: “There’s some good clubs in the Europa League. It’s still a difficult competition to do well in and it’s going to be challenging, so we have to focus and make sure we get there and into the groups.”

Gordon added: “We go in as favourites, but we have to go out and earn that and take the opportunity.”

criticism that comes and you move on. Okay it wasn’t a brilliant performance at the weekend but we got through and that was important for us. We got working again and got back into competition phase.”

Celtic would be in better shape if a few more signings had been made but Rodgers can only work with what he’s got. New players will come in but they need to be Rodgers’s kind of footballers and not simply someone who can fill a shirt.

“It’s about getting the right type of quality,” the manager said. “What I’ve always felt is the squad needs competition. And I like I said at the beginning we lost two real competitors from our squad, players that drove the team on, drove individual players on.

“We’ve always had that. If you don’t have that it’s not what you want for your group. But we can’t just bring anyone in to say we’ve signed a player. There has to be a purpose and a reason behind it and it has to be someone that is of a quality that we want. Otherwise there is no point doing it.

“I know many. It’s been pretty clear for the last three months. I know exactly how many wanted, who we wanted, it’s as simple as that. And if we can’t and we can’t get the targets and we have to move to another one or that’s not quite right then that’s where we are. We go with what we’ve got.”