‘We’re not at this level yet’

opportunities to create something ourselves and our decision-making wasn’t great and we allowed the pressure to build up on us.

“They are a good team and if you keep giving them opportunities they are going to take them. We were trying to hold on, but we just needed to be a bit more composed particularly when we had the ball, to control the game a bit better. But it’s easy for me to say.

“We hung in there unbelievably well, Joe Hart made some unbelievable saves. We were really resilient defensively, but they got the better of us at the end.”

Asked about Celtic’s chances in the Conference League, Postecoglou said: “My main thoughts are around how do we get to this level? This is where we want to be. It’s not that we are disappointed we are in the Conference League, but we want to be competing at this level with these teams.

“I felt with all the group games we were slowly became a better side at dealing with the best teams in this competition. How do we bridge that gap? I want us playing against the best in the best competitions. There is still a little gap there and we have to still build from that.”

The Celtic manager outlined his thinking behind taking off Jota in the BayArena when his side were still 2-1 to the good.

The Portuguese winger performed brilliantly for the visitors but Postecoglou felt replacing him and his fellow front men James Forrest and Kyogo Furuhashi late on would lift his side’s energy levels.

“He is going well,” he said. “We took him off because him and James in the front three worked really hard.

“I felt we needed some extra energy particularly in the wide areas and we had two players on the bench to do that. I felt it was a good time to make the substitutions.”

Postecoglou added: “You saw he is playing against a very good team, good opponents, he wasn’t able to dominate the way he usually does.

“He just needs to keep working at it. He’s a young guy and he’s still learning. He took his goal really well, which again showed his quality.

“But there are still a lot of areas he needs to develop and the more we push him to play the football we do the more he will develop. He wants to. He knows he still has a lot to learn.”