NIR BITTON says the Celtic squad have shown manager Ange Postecoglou that 'he can trust every single one’ of them after the club’s fringe players dug deep to beat Real Betis on Thursday night.

Bitton was one of the few experienced players selected by Postecoglou as the Celtic manager used the ‘dead rubber’ fixture to give game-time to some of his under-used squad members.

And the Israeli believes that Postecoglou will now be more confident about pitching some of those players in when it really matters over the festive period after they showed him what they are made of against the La Liga side.

“I think in every sports team, not just football, you need to have a mix of experienced players and young players,” Bitton said.

“I think me, Bainy (Scott Bain) and Macca (James McCarthy) against Betis, we are all experienced players and have been through a lot of things in football.

“I think it was important for us to show some responsibility on Thursday night to the young boys, and I think we had a good game against a decent side. We just need to keep going.

“All of the young players had a very good game. If someone saw our line-up before the match, they would say ‘ah, it’s going to be a long night for them’, but we showed that it was totally different.

“We pressed them from the first minute. We kept the ball quite well.

“As a group we showed that the manager can trust every single one of us and that was the main target for us.

“I think we all showed that against Betis. We played against a decent side, they are third in La Liga. The team they put out was quite a strong team and we coped with that really well.

“Our squad is good, our squad is strong. We believe in each other. We have a system we try to work on every single day.

“As I said, even the guys who didn’t play much since the beginning of the season, they came in and did an amazing job. We are on the right track.

“We knew before the game that it doesn’t matter which line-up we had, we had to finish this competition in the best way we can.”

Bitton has been at Celtic for almost a decade now, so he is well-placed to judge the methods of Postecoglou against his predecessors at the club.

The Celtic manager has taken on some responsibility for the muscle injuries currently affecting his players due to the high intensity he wants from them at training and in games, and Bitton agrees that the current demands being placed on them are as high as any he has experienced since being at the club.

That said, he is more than confident that the players can handle it, and that they will ultimately be rewarded for doing so.

“It’s up there,” he said.

“The expectations were always there since I came to Celtic, when you play for such a big club, you always expect to win trophies and fight for every competition you are playing in.

“I would say that now with the manager training is really intense, and you see that the guys who didn’t play much since the beginning of the season, they coped with the intensity very well against Betis because we train with that intensity every day.

“From my point of view I’m just trying to improve every day, even though I’m 30 now.

“I’m trying to learn new things, and every manager that comes to Celtic, it is a good opportunity because all of them are very knowledgeable and very good at their job.

“The training is really intense, the quality is always there, and we just need to make sure we improve as a team.”

Bitton captained the team against Betis, and he had a word or two for manager Postecoglou should he ever be considering replacing Callum McGregor in the role.

“One game, one win, just give me it!” he joked.

“It was a real privilege for me, I was really honoured to captain this amazing club.

“It’s just another milestone for me. I’ve been here almost nine years, I really love the club and everything about it.”