Brendan Rodgers hands Celtic recruits Livingston pitch warning as boss pinpoints key away day 'challenges'

Brendan Rodgers has warned his new boys to get ready for the pitch from hell when they run out at Livingston.

The Celtic boss has shrugged off claims from Livi boss Davie Martindale that his team might be mentally fatigued after the travel and trauma involved in Tuesday night’s Champions League defeat away to Feyenoord. But Rodgers does concede that Celtic’s biggest challenge will be getting to grips with the notorious plastic playing surface in West Lothian. Celtic only recently ended a five game winless streak at the Tony Macaroni arena and Rodgers believes that run was down to one thing only.

He said: “It’s the pitch - the speed of the game is a lot slower. If your defence is packed out then in order to move teams around that have low blocks and lots of bodies there, you are relying on the speed of the pitch. Because the quicker the ball moves, the quicker they need to move. If it’s a slow pitch, they don’t have to move quite the same way. Then that density makes it really difficult.

"You could put 11 teachers, journalists or bin men in there and it’s a challenge. You have to get over that. There are always challenges with the surface.

"I remember being up here before and the away games were a challenge. We were on a run of games where we’d scored a load of goals and went to play Livingston and drew 0-0.”

But Celtic’s boss will not use tiredness as an excuse for another hiccup. He said: “It’s no excuse.The guys are now used to it. A lot of those guys now have been playing the past couple of seasons in European football – that’s part of the gig here.

“That’s part of moving on quickly. You can’t dwell on the games. You have 24 hours when you can suffer but the strength is to get up and fight the next time and get going