“The level just hasn’t been quite good enough,” Liam Scales

Celtic’s form of late has been nothing short of dismal, save for the 7-1 hammering of Hearts. Three wins out of ten matches, the latest setbacks coming from dropping five points from the last two very winnable Scottish Premiership matches against Dundee United at Celtic and then away to Falkirk on Sunday.

The Bhoys have two matches before the international break, both at home, and the target has to be two victories starting tomorrow night against the Istanbul outfit who will be looking for a victory to take them up to ten points from the opening four rounds of fixtures and of course leaving Celtic pointless.

It’s hard not to notice that the team is disjointed, poorly coached and tactically all over the place, the most obvious example of that being in the 1-0 home defeat to the Rangers where Celtic were an absolute shambles.

Scales accepts that things aren’t right and points to the new players maybe not being fully up to speed with regard to the requirements of wearing the jersey. That though is just one of a long list of problems that the Celtic support continually point out, but it always falls on deaf ears.

Scales admits too that the more experienced Celtic players need to lead by example and that includes the likes of Callum McGregor, the Celtic captain, Celtic’s Big Strong Man Cameron Carter-Vickers and himself.

“There’s been a lot of ins and outs and people are probably still feeling out the club,” the Irish central defender stated. “I don’t think everyone understands, when they first come, how big the club is and it can take a while. The hard thing is you don’t really have time to settle in.

“It’s a difficult thing to do when you lose close to 10 players and 10 new players come in. It takes time. So we just need to keep pushing and get back to the place where we were a couple of years ago,” Scales pointed out.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m blaming the new players. That’s not the case at all. We do need to take responsibility because the responsibility lies with the more experienced players and players who have experienced what the club is like.

“We probably do need to lead by example a bit more,” Scales admitted. “Also confidence comes into it. If you’re maybe doubting yourself a little bit, that can contribute to a loss of form.

“I don’t want to point fingers or pick apart who’s been playing well and who hasn’t. We’re a team. Overall, the level just hasn’t been quite good enough and we’re just slightly off it.

“We know the standards. We haven’t been meeting the standards of the club and what we’ve set in the last few years. So we know that it’s important for us to get the club back where it should be.

“It’s always been the same here, you need to win every week, and we haven’t been doing that. So we understand that’s not good enough and we know how important it is to get on a run of form and build some momentum.”

Watch Liam Scales’ media conference below…