PATRICK Roberts insists that Celtic’s heavy defeat against Bayern Munich has not shaken his belief that the Hoops are capable of competing at the top level.
The German champions cruised to a 3-0 victory at the Allianz Arena on Wednesday evening, the Bhoys’ second sobering defeat in three Group B games following a 5-0 home defeat to Paris Saint-Germain.
However, an impressive 3-0 victory away to Anderlecht on match day two has put Brendan Rodgers' side in a strong position to secure European football after Christmas.
Roberts admitted that his side must do better, but believes the Celtic players can learn from the setback in Bavaria.
Read more: Party over as Bayern Munich expose Celtic's defensive shortcomings
"This is where we will be judged as players, in these big games,” he told BBC Scotland.
"A bit of magic from one of their players is all they need, but we've conceded three from crosses and we've got to do better.
"It's very tough, you can see it's tough. They're world class players, some of the best in the world, but we want to play in this competition and compete with them as much as we can."
"We know where we are. We're still trying to improve at this level.
"Maybe outside people are trying to build us up to knock us down, but we know what we're trying to do and to come here and get anything is a massive ask.
"We tried to come here with a plan, which I think we did better second half, so we continue to try and improve and move forward that way.
"We couldn't manage it for 90 minutes, but I think we have to remember who we're up against here - a team that could go very far in this competition.
"Everyone knows we're high on confidence. We'll put that to bed now and look forward to the semi-final.
"You can always learn. Football's a learning game - you can learn from winning, you can learn from losing.
"We got beat, but we got beat by a good side. We have to take positives out of that and we've still got three games left."
Celtic face Hibernian on Saturday in the first Betfred Cup semi-final at Hampden Park as they aim to defend the trophy won last season.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel