I said before Celtic’s trip to Livingston last Sunday that it was as important as the Cluj game. Celtic had wrested the initiative from Rangers with the win at Ibrox, and now they have handed it back to their rivals.

The important thing is that Celtic don’t get too swept up in all the hype around Rangers at the minute. Initiative can swing week to week, and I think there are going to be a lot of toing and froing before the end of the season.

I still think that Celtic have the better players, the better team and the better squad, but Rangers are definitely closing the gap. That’s why Celtic don’t want to hand them any unnecessary impetus, and that’s what they did last week.

I also said last week that I thought Neil Lennon may tweak the team, but he didn’t, and that surprised me.

I get that the players were coming off the high of the Europa League win over Cluj, but going to Livingston is a completely different environment. Fair play to Livi, they have a physical approach and that seemed to knock Celtic out of their stride. You are playing on an artificial pitch that seems to affect players no matter how much they say it won’t in the lead up to the game, and I wonder now if Neil would admit that he should have taken a different approach.

For me, going with the freshness he had in reserve from Thursday night might have been the way to tackle the trip to Livingston and all it entails. Not only would the physical and mental fatigue not be an issue for the players on the fringes, but psychologically they would also be going there with a real hunger and a point to prove. So, it shocked me a little bit that he only changed the right-back area with Moritz Bauer coming in for Hatem Elhamed.

There’s an element of truth to say that collectively it was just a bad day, but I don’t think there is any doubt that Thursday night’s exertions played their part. In some ways, I can understand the Celtic manager’s reasoning, because with international week looming he might have felt that a lot of his players would get a rest during that period.

I thought though that while physical tiredness played a part, mental tiredness coming off the back of such a big game was the main issue that contributed to Celtic playing way below their normal standards. In hindsight, everybody is an expert, but I had mentioned this last week just for the record!

To go from playing the champions of Romania and then suddenly you’re at Livingston, I don’t mean to be disrespectful here, but there was almost a look about Celtic that said; ‘cheeky buggers, how dare you beat us?’ You can’t afford to go into any game, let alone against such a competitive team as Livingston are, with that attitude.

The midfield and the wide areas are probably the parts of the team that could have been freshened up, with Tom Rogic and OIivier Ntcham coming in. The boys from last Thursday could always have been kept on the bench should things not be going your way. It was an opportunity to give some of the fringe guys a chance while the more established players would know they hadn’t been dropped, only rested.

Celtic played with no conviction, fluidity or sharpness, and Celtic have to make sure that the next venue they go to where a team takes a similar approach to Livingston – and there will be a few – they don’t allow their opponents to knock them so far off their stride.