Brendan Rodgers last night warned that players frustrated at not getting regular game time will be direction to last night’s performance at Fir Park.

Celtic scorned a chance to go back to the top of the table after allowing Motherwell a leveller just two minutes from time. Danny Johnson’s equaliser came on the back of a missed penalty and a Filip Benkovic first-half goal which was chopped off.

Despite that, Rodgers maintained that the performance was inadequate from start to finish.

“It’s good for a manager to see – players will knock and ask about why they are not playing and I need to see a game like that,” he said.

Rodgers made seven changes from the team who won the Betfred League Cup on Sunday afternoon but the 45-yeaer-old has no regrets about shuffling his squad.

“When you bring in full international players you’d expect it to be ok,” he said. “You can’t go through a season with 11 players. We have players out injured so yeah it was what we had to do.

“The result doesn’t change the fact were comfortable at 1-0 and we have to see it out.

“The last four or five minutes doesn’t change that.”

Results last night mean that Celtic now go into a top-of-the-table clash against Kilmarnock on Saturday afternoon. The Rugby Park side moved to the top of the table following their 2-0 win over Livingston and Rodgers is keen to see his side get last night’s display out of their system.

“Kilmarnock have played a couple more games than us but it’s still really good for them to be up there and it makes the game at the weekend very important for us,” he said.

“We’ll recover and look forward to playing at home as it feels like ages since we played at home.”

Olivier Ntcham was replaced at the break after struggling on the left-hand side of midfield but Rodgers hinted that he was irked at the performance of the French under-21 internationalist.

Leigh Griffiths also mad way midway through the second period, with Rodgers revealed that the striker was suffering from cramp given his recent time on the sidelines.

“He just cramped up – it’s his first start in a while and the idea was to get minutes into his legs,” he said.

“Ntcham change was tactical. We needed more – it was as simple as that.”

And while Rodgers was frustrated at the result he was also scathing of the performance as a whole.

“It was a game that we didn’t play well in - in particular the first-half,” he said.

“We scored a good goal and then didn’t take the chance with the penalty and also had a good goal ruled out from Filip Benkovic.

“At that stage I wasn’t so happy with our positioning and level of our game.

“In the second half our positioning was better but we were still too loose.

“Then of course if you don’t take chances you are vulnerable at the end of the game. It’s definitely two points dropped.

“It’s good to look at the levels – Jonny Hayes did great and I think his thrust and pressing was very good given that he hasn’t played for a while.

“He showed moments of quality despite not playing for a while.

“For us and the level we’ve been at it was not so good.

“From our perspective it’s a poor goal to lose. We didn’t win the first ball, the second, the third and he scores from a very narrow angle.

“It was a disappointing goal to concede.

“I don’t think they took it for granted it was down to concentration.

“And we also had a good goal disallowed and a chance from a penalty.

“We just made too many mistakes.”