Scott Brown: A '˜right good hiding' but we'll bounce back

Scott Brown grapples with PSG's Giovani Lo Celso at Celtic Park.

Celtic fear partial ground closure over pitch invasion

The Celtic captain made no attempt to sugar-coat the extent of his team’s humbling 5-0 defeat at home to the French side in their opening Champions League Group B fixture.

Brown admits his club’s heaviest loss at Celtic Park since 1895 could have been even worse had PSG made more of the clear gulf in quality between the sides.

But the 32-year-old midfielder believes Brendan Rodgers’ men can take encouragement from last season when they bounced back from a record 7-0 defeat in Barcelona to compete more credibly in their remaining Champions League group matches.

Celtic still finished bottom of their group last year, however, and are targeting progress this time in the shape of at least a third-place finish, which would earn them qualification for the last 32 of the Europa League.

With Bayern Munich expected to join PSG in the top two slots in Group B, it is likely to come down to a shoot-out between Celtic and Anderlecht – beaten 3-0 by Bayern on Tuesday – for the consolation prize. The sides meet on matchday two in Brussels on 27 September.

“The focus has to be on the next game now,” said Brown. “European football is notoriously difficult and we played a game on Tuesday night against a team who have just spent the guts of £400m on two players [Neymar and Kylian Mbappe]. They spent a lot of money to try to win this competition and they gave us a night of it.

“It could have been more, especially in the first half, although I do think that we gave a better account of ourselves in the second. Now it is on to Anderlecht in a fortnight and going away from home is never easy. We have to learn quickly from some of the mistakes that we made against PSG and try to take that into the next game over in Brussels.

“PSG are right up there as one of the best teams I have ever played against, but so they should be with the amount of money that they have spent. They have great players and a couple of technical geniuses as well. They could go a long, long way.

“It is too early to tip them to win the Champions League this season but it’s fair to say that they gave us a right good hiding, that’s for sure. It is up to us to try and come back from that and take what we can from it.

“The bar is going to get raised as high as possible, but what we want to do is go out and compete. We didn’t do that for big chunks of the game. If we can take anything positive, it is the way we tried to lift ourselves in the first half an hour of the second half and that is what we need to draw on as we look to collect ourselves before Anderlecht.

“Last season we had a heavy loss in the Nou Camp. We got over that and we have to find some of the form that we showed in the competition after that.

“We can be more composed, we can do more with the ball and we can create chances. But it doesn’t damage our confidence.”

Brown, meanwhile, insists there was never any prospect of him not signing the contract extension he agreed with Celtic this week which will take his stay at the club to 2018.

“There was never an issue,” he said. “I had spoken to the gaffer ages ago and he had told me that he would go and sort it out.

“There are one or two others here who are probably in a better position to go and get a deal than I was, but I am delighted to get it. I had a good chat with [chief executive] Peter Lawwell to sort it out and I am delighted.”