MOUSSA Dembele said that the scale of last night’s defeat against his former club Paris St Germain meant he would derive no satisfaction from his goal – even though it was the first the big-spending Parisians had conceded in the Champions League throughout the group stages.
Stung by conceding so early, PSG went on to score seven goals without reply, with Neymar and Edinson Cavani notching two apiece, and Marco Verratti, Kylian Mbappe and Dani Alves completing the rout.
"When I'm on the pitch I try to score and I scored today,” said the French Under-21 striker, who received applause when he was substituted for Leigh Griffiths late on. “But we lost the game. It's all about the team and it's all about the club. We lost the game today and that's what I feel. So I can’t really take any satisfaction from the goal, no.”
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The match transpired the way the bookmakers has priced it – most had Celtic at 25/1 to win – but Dembele said that the attitude and application of the Parkhead side’s players couldn’t be faulted. "When you play against this kind of players it's hard to get something from the game but in the beginning we were on the game and ready to go,” he said. “That's what happens in football sometimes. You need to learn from your mistakes.”
Skipper Scott Brown, meanwhile, hit out at the sloppy defending which led to conceding the first three goals but said the work would being now to ensure that the club bounces back for Sunday’s Betfred Cup Hampden showpiece against Motherwell.
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"I think some of the goals for us, maybe the first three, were a little bit too sloppy,” said Brown. “But they've scored some wonderful goals and they've got some top-class players. I think after the first period and the first 20 minutes we've done not too bad and tried to keep the ball but after that we lost a bit of shape and a little bit of focus after losing a couple of quick goals.
It's always going to happen that top-quality players are going to create chances but you need to be that little bit lucky to get those breaks,” he added. “But they were great goals hitting the post and hitting the bar to go in. You need a little bit of luck coming here but take nothing away from them. They played really well.
“The hardest thing to accept it just losing seven goals,” he said. “Nobody likes to do that.
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"But the way we played we tried to play throughout the whole game, we don't want to just ping the ball long and defend for 90 minutes. That's not the gaffer's philosophy and it's not the way we want to play. I think we need to build on this. We've got one game left to try and push for Europa football.
“We’ll bounce back, that's not a problem. We knew it was going to be hard here. We came, we fought and maybe didn't do as well as we thought we were going to do. But we've got a huge game coming up on Sunday and we need to bounce back for that."
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