Nir Bitton: Pressure is high at Celtic
Nir Bitton believes Celtic are judged by standards that even the best teams in the world fail to reach.
Boss Ronny Deila found himself under pressure after losing 3-1 in the League Cup semi-final to Ross County at Hampden Park and going down 2-1 to Ladbrokes Premiership title rivals Aberdeen at Pittodrie.
A 2-0 William Hill Scottish Cup fifth-round win over Lowland League side East Kilbride last Sunday did little to appease his doubters with the Norwegian stating that defeats left him feeling as "though the police are standing outside your door in the morning, waiting to take you in because you have done something criminal."
Ahead of the visit of Ross County in the league on Saturday, where Celtic will look to open up a three-point gap on the Dons at the top of the table, Bitton spoke about the constant pressure of playing for a club which has to deal with high expectations.
The 24-year-old Israel midfielder said: "When you play for a club like Celtic you always have pressure on you. It doesn't matter if it's the Scottish league or European competition.
"It was a tough week, two disappointing results, first the semi-final then the Aberdeen game but when you play for a club like Celtic you always want to win and bounce back.
"If you look at the biggest teams in the world, you always have tough times.
"If you look at Chelsea or Real Madrid, they don't even win every game.
"Sometimes you have this kind of thing. The most important thing is to bounce back and win the next game.
"We always look forward, we have an important game on Saturday and want to win it."
Kris Commons is back in contention for Celtic after suffering from illness as well as hamstring issues, as is fellow midfielder Tom Rogic, who has been out with an ankle injury.
Only defender Jozo Simunovic (knee) and Saidy Janko (ankle) are unavailable through injury.
Ross County travel to Glasgow hoping to repeat their surprise League Cup semi-final win over Celtic in league action.
But skipper Andrew Davies expects to see a Hoops side out for revenge.
"Whoever Celtic field it will still be a strong side," he said. "They have spent a lot of money on building a strong squad.
"They will obviously want to get the better of us after what happened at Hampden but we have to be ready to go again.
"Parkhead is somewhere we can go and get a result. I have full confidence that if we can play as well as we can and stay focused, we can repeat what happened in the semi-final."
County have an unchanged squad, with Craig Curran still missing as he waits for a long-term concussion problem to clear up.
Defender Scott Boyd (calf) also remains on the sidelines.
Source: PAR
