ERIK SVIATCHENKO last night insisted Celtic will finish off the job against Lincoln Red Imps after the team’s humiliating defeat in Gibraltar.

The Danish defender, viewed as a weak link by the semi-professional side before the game, was adamant that the squad were too professional to go out at such an early stage of the Champions League qualifiers.

The first-leg result sent shockwaves right across the football world; however, if the Red Imps were to knock out Celtic it would arguably go down as the biggest giant killing in the history of the European game.

However, Sviatchenko, while unhappy with what happened on Tuesday night, believes that was a mere blip and that he and his team-mates will not repeat the mistakes of the first match.

He said: “We didn’t expect this loss but we are confident when we go to Celtic Park we will do our jobs. We didn’t do our jobs on Tuesday night.

“Yes, it was a difficult pitch even though we shouldn’t need any excuses because we weren’t good enough. But if you see the goal it has suddenly bounced over the head of Efe Ambrose and didn’t go in our direction.

“We are still confident we will do our job at Celtic Park. That is our ground, it is grass and we will be top professionals. We did prepare well for the first leg and we knew everything about them.

“We were not shocked or anything. They played long balls and we had everything under control but that chance we needed didn’t go our way.”

Celtic supporters will find it difficult to accept that their team were ever in control of a match they seemed to treat as another pre-season runabout

This is something Sviatchenko rejected and said: “It wasn’t as if we were taking it easy because we knew it was going to be a difficult task. I was here last season with my former team and I knew how difficult a game it would be.

“Of course, we never go out to intentionally lose. We will do everything in our power to do our job on Wednesday in the second leg. It is never a result you want when you go into the Champions League qualifiers.

“We knew it would be hard and we didn’t get the result we had hoped.”

Sviatchenko admitted the Celtic players were hurting but insisted they remained together and this setback has not altered what Brendan Rodgers was trying to achieve with the group.

He said: “We have a very solid team and we are all working to the same goal, which is to go to the Champions League. You ask about the pride it is different. We just need to keep going and to be serious.

“We can’t jump around looking for the easy we out; we just need to keep doing the right things and to be ready for the next game.

“It is always difficult because we are still in the very early stages and you never want to talk about process and projects. “The new manager has come in and we are still adapting to all his ideas.

“Sometimes you will see good results and other times like Tuesday night where we didn’t score the goals we needed. Next week we will be one week more on and we will be even better. I am 100 per cent certain going into the second leg.”