NEIL LENNON admits he is scratching his head at Celtic’s alarming slump in form, and that he resorted to asking his confidence-shorn players what has gone wrong after another crushing defeat at the hands of Sparta Prague.

The Celtic manager thinks that there is a psychological issue within his dressing room as he tries to find an answer to how a team who defeated Lazio in the Stadio Olimpico a little over a year ago can have regressed to the point where they were embarrassed yet again by Sparta last night.

“That is what I am scratching my head about,” Lennon said. “That’s the question I asked in the dressing room afterwards. Why we have gone the other way?

“I don’t know if it’s a lack of confidence in individuals or in the team themselves.We haven’t changed in the backroom team and the way we process training and analyse the games. I just think they are lacking a little bit of confidence at the minute as a group. That happens with the way results are going.

“I thought the performance, particularly in the second half, was really positive. Odsonne (Edouard) had a great chance to equalise and he was great tonight, it was a real positive to see him back playing so well. But defensively at the minute we are a little but unnerved at times and we have to remedy that as quickly as possible. It is a question we are asking ourselves.

“I was asking them why we’re conceding goals. Are we lacking confidence in ourselves? Are we lacking that as a group? It was a conversation I put out to the players to get their opinions.

“We’re hoping, having spoken about it, they can galvanise themselves from that.

“It’s not good enough, it’s unacceptable the manner of the defeat.

“That’s two defeats to Sparta now. But I thought the performance was nowhere near as disjointed or as bad as it was two weeks ago. And I felt we deserved better out of the game. That has to be something we’ve positive about.

“When you’re going through a run like this confidence is a big thing. And a few of them are lacking a bit of confidence.

“It’s my job to keep with them and for them to keep with us to turn a corner.”

Lennon criticised his players after the draw against Hibernian at the weekend, but was wary about affecting their brittle confidence further as he explained how he was planning on turning the situation around.

“You cajole them and you stick together,” he said.

“That’s what we’ve done and what we’ll always do. I’m not going to come out here and criticise the players for a lack of effort or a lack of belief. Because there is plenty of criticism out there.

“We’re going through a spell where we’re not getting that we want out of the games.

“So we have to turn things quickly and get on a good run. The players are capable of doing that.

“The way life is for them, away from the training ground, makes it different to what they’re used to. That’s been a huge adjustment and some have adjusted better than others.

“At the training ground they’re all in different dressing rooms and the only time they see each other is what they go out into the pitch.

“We just have to try and harvest that harmony again as best we possibly can. And hopefully it’ll turn things around.

“For 35 minutes in the second half that’s as good as we’ve played in Europe for a while. And yet we still got beat 4-1 and you’re left scratching your head why.”