We will never let up in pursuit of success, says Celtic skipper Brown

Celtic skipper Scott Brown believes they need to constantly strive for improvement to ensure they keep hitting their targets.

Neil Lennon’s side are on course to extend their domestic dominance beyond 10 consecutive trophies, with a 12-point lead in the Ladbrokes Premiership and a William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final against Aberdeen to come.

But Brown will never get complacent. The champions are 10 points better off then they were at this stage last season, having dropped just eight points from 28 matches, and the midfielder feels that record stems from a desire to up their game.

“I think every year we feel like we have to step up and keep hitting the goals we set at the start of the season,” Brown said.

“We sit down and chat and discuss, as a team and the management staff as well, where we want to be and what we want to do.

“We are slowly ticking everything off and so far we have done that well, but we need to make sure we are on top of everything well in, week out, and that’s in training and in games as well.”

Celtic extended their winning run in domestic cups to 34 matches with a Scottish Cup triumph over St Johnstone on Saturday but that followed a European exit against Copenhagen.

“Stats are all good when they are positive but if you go back one before that, we got beat,” Brown said. “We need to make sure we just keep improving as much as we possibly can.”

Brown’s quest for progress continues at Livingston on Wednesday night, at the venue of Celtic’s only domestic defeat on the road this season. Their only other away loss came with an under-strength team at Cluj after they had already won their Europa League group.

Celtic lost 2-0 at the Tony Macaroni Arena in September after having Ryan Christie sent off but subsequently won their next 12 games in all competitions before the trip to Romania.

“It was a hard one to take for us,” Brown said. “We had a couple of weeks to think about it because the lads went straight to international duty as well. The lads didn’t meet up again for maybe 10 days afterwards.

“You always analyse yourself and go back and watch the games and think what you could have done better.

“From then we bounced on again. We are not perfect, we know that, we are not going to win every game five or six-nothing. It’s about learning from your mistakes.

“We didn’t play that well, even going down to 10 men, and it just wasn’t to be that day. Livingston were very well organised and played well.”