Brendan Rodgers says the feeling following Celtic’s defeat at Rangers last time out doesn’t override the “facts”.
Celtic are still top of the league, with their only significant blip coming at Ibrox on January 2.
Rodgers has made several changes to his starting XI for today’s home Scottish Premiership match against St Mirren.
Celtic are looking to put their loss to Rangers behind them, and the Hoops manager has decided to leave the likes of Kyogo Furuhashi, Liam Scales, and Reo Hatate on the bench for this one.
Republic of Ireland striker Adam Idah leads the line, and Rodgers explained why.
It’s more for the team, it’s always changes for the team and there’s no extra pressure on Adam,” he told BBC Scotland.
“We’ve done it throughout this really, really busy campaign, we’ve made changes to keep the freshness.
“So, just because we lost a game, I don’t lose sight of the bigger picture of that.
“For him [Idah] to come in, he’s worked very hard in training, he’s come into games more recently, and today’s a big opportunity for him to show his qualities.”
On the impetus to bounce back with a strong display, Rodgers said: “I think that’s key when you lose. If you look at where we are at, the bigger picture in terms of 16 games won, two games drawn, and one defeat from 19 games. So, we are pleased with that start to the season.
“We take another step today into the second part of the season. The feeling doesn’t change the facts that we’ve been really, really good up until this point. So, an off day for us the other day, the best team won. We haven’t spent too much time dwelling on it [the loss to Rangers] too much and now we get ready for this game.
“The game that did we lose was also a great learning opportunity for us, I haven’t seen a performance like that from us in a long time, so let’s learn from it. Let’s go now, we have two home games starting today, which gives us the great opportunity to show the real Celtic.
