Liel Abada misses Celtic game over wrong state of mind as Brendan Rodgers comes clean

Brendan Rodgers insists he is determined to silence the doubters who are trying to drag him down.

The fired up Hoops boss reckons there are a section of snipers who are out to paint Celtic as a club in crisis – despite sitting top of the Premiership and into the last eight of the Scottish Cup. Rodgers’ men saw off spirited St Mirren in Paisley on Sunday to set up a quarter-final clash with Livingston at Parkhead next month.

The 2-0 victory made it eight wins and draw in their last nine games in all competitions – including six clean sheets. But Rodgers has bristled at some of the criticism of his team and him personally – and vowed to come out fighting. The Celtic boss – who revealed troubled Liel Abada was left out yesterday as his mind wasn’t on the game – said: “I don’t think it’s a crisis. It’s obviously a narrative that’s been created outside.

“But I don’t expect anything less to be honest. We just focus on ourselves. We are a winning club. When you’ve won consistently over a number of years, people will look to jump on you and bring you down – and bring me down.

“I am here to win. For sure we will have our day, and have many days going forward. We’ll get our influential players back and the squad will be very strong to the end of the season. We’ll continue to fight. We just have to prove a point to ourselves and our supporters. I think that’s always the best attitude. You are always looking to prove a point. It’s a part of the world where there is a lot of noise – and this year in particular when it hasn’t been as fluent.”

Rodgers admitted concerns over Abada however with the Israel ace struggling with conflict in his homeland. He said: “He wasn’t in a right frame of mind.

“I’ll spoke a lot to Liel and it has been