Mikael Lustig has urged Celtic not to hit the panic button in the wake of their limp Europa League exit.

Ronny Deila's side crashed out of the competition on Thursday night after a 2-1 defeat to Ajax and the Hoops are without a win in the entire group stage.

Pressure is mounting now on Deila while there has also been criticism towards the Celtic board for their failure to bring in experienced players over the summer.

However, Lustig has insisted that there has to be a measured assessment of where it has gone wrong for Celtic this season.

“You cannot panic now," said the Swedish defender. "The board have done a good job and they have done very well with the transfers. You can’t spend big money to get big players here, that is just a fact. It is dangerous to do that. We have quality in the squad but it is down to us as footballers to show that now.

“When I came to Celtic they had a tough time too. It is always like that in football. You cannot always be good sometimes you need to hit the bottom to go up.

“We were better against Ajax but we need to be more cynical and stop with the stupid goals. It is easy to say but it is harder to do but we know that it is down to us to correct it on the pitch.”

And Lustig has also insisted that it is the Celtic players who need to shoulder some of the blame for the stalled progress this season.

“There was no problems with our tactics or the way we were set up," he said. "It is s players. It is us who keep on losing cheap goals. We can do better. We had good chances too to kill the game off and we just didn’t have the quality to do that.

“It was so disappointing. That is us now in Europe and to be honest we are gutted."

The hallmark of this campaign has been an alarming tendency to gift cheap goals - Celtic have shipped 11 of them in the group - and Lustig is well aware that such weak foundations were always going to make it hard to make any kind of progress.

However, he does believe that it is a problem that can be rectified.

“Even the first goal against Ajax on Thursday night we were so naive," he lamented. "But overall I thought we played a decent game. We had a lot of chances to kill the game off and I felt we were the stronger team in the late stages of the game. We should have got the corner and got the ball into the box but these things happen and it is history now.

“We win and lose as a team. If you look at the facts, we have not been good enough in this campaign. We have conceded more than one goal in every game and at this level that is not anywhere near good enough in Europe. If you defend like that then you cannot expect to go through. There is only one way to fix it and that is on the training ground."