ANGE POSTECOGLOU says that his players were ‘terrible’ in the attacking third as he criticised his men after losing to Livingston at the Tony Macaroni Arena.

A first-half Andrew Shinnie strike was enough to give Livi the three points against a lacklustre Celtic outfit, who lost away from home for the third time in three Premiership matches this season.

The Celtic manager blamed a combination of poor attacking play and a lack of application from the start for his team’s latest loss on the road.

“Our front third play was poor, it was probably the poorest it’s been all year,” Postecoglou said.

“We’ve obviously had some issues defensively, but I just thought today in the front half we were terrible.

“That was everybody, not just the strikers or the attacking players, we lacked a real conviction in going forward to be positive. That falls on me to get it right.”

Postecoglou says that his players have to realise that their football is not always going to be enough to get results away from Celtic Park.

“In the other away games we were well in the games and played well,” he said.

“But you know what? On the other hand, if we don’t get results away from home then we can’t be successful, so that’s still got to change.

“Irrespective of what I think about performances, we’ve still got to get the results, and that’s the reality of it. Until we tackle that in the right way, then we’re going to have this problem.

“Our performances have been good, today is disappointing because you come here knowing it’s not going to be an easy game and you’re going to have to go beyond just trying to play some football.

“We lacked that spark at the start of the game. I just felt we fell into the trap of maybe thinking that this kind of game with the challenges it has, our football would find a solution through that. That was never going to happen, we needed to earn the right.

“It was disappointing. We started the game very sterile, we didn’t really take the game to them.

“We wanted to just ease our way into the game and when they scored we’re obviously chasing the game.

“Our football was ok, we created some chances, but our decisions in the final third were really poor.

“We ultimately paid the price for not applying ourselves as we should.”