Ange Postecoglou was understandably disappointed after tonight’s 4-0 defeat at Celtic Park to Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League.

The German side scored twice in either half to secure a comprehensive victory on matchday two of the group stages, while the Hoops passed up a number of opportunities throughout the game.

Both sides had 18 shots in the course of the 90 minutes, with Celtic having six of those on target compared to Leverkusen’s 11.

But, of course, the only statistic that matters comes the final whistle is the scoreline, and it showed that the German side had converted four of those chances.

Speaking after the game, the Celtic manager said: “It was disappointing. They’re a good side, they’ve got some quality and they took the chances they had.

'We helped them a little bit with that with some mistakes, and the chances we had we didn’t take, and their goalkeeper was outstanding as well. So it was a disappointing night.'

“That’s kind of the story for us at the moment in general, and we’ve just got to be stronger mentally and better at taking those chances – especially tonight.

“You’re facing a quality team, you know they’re going to have their own moments, and you’ve got to try and put some pressure on them, particularly by taking the opportunities you have and, again, not giving them any opportunities, and we fell down on both areas.

“When you’re playing against top quality, you’ve got to be on it, and you’ve got to take the opportunities you have. At the same time, we shouldn’t be conceding four goals. It’s not a game where we should be conceding four goals.”

Celtic will not have long to wait for the opportunity to get back to winning ways, with a Sunday lunchtime kick-off against Aberdeen at Pittodrie next on the cards this weekend.

And while Ange Postecoglou is looking for his side to get a positive result, he also does not want his players to set aside the experience of losing to Bayer Leverkusen. Rather, he is looking for them to use it as motivation.

'They can’t put it to the back of their minds, they have to have it in the front of their minds. We can’t keep disappointing our supporters.'

“We can keep saying that we’ve had disruptions, we’ve had issues with the squad and the team and our performances have been okay.

"But we’ve got to take the pain and disappointment we’ve experienced tonight as a motivation to fuel fire for the game on Sunday because otherwise, if we keep putting it to one side and hoping things will turn around, it just won’t happen that way.”

Manager: We need to be better at taking and stopping chances