NIR BITTON says that Celtic’s doubters fired them up to roar back from their defeat to Rangers to open up their current 13-point gap at the top of the Premiership.

The Israeli believes that everyone outside of the club in Scotland wanted the champions to fail after they were beaten by their rivals at Celtic Park in late December.

He says though that he never had any doubt in his mind that Celtic would respond well to that adversity because of the unshakeable winning mentality and the quality among his teammates in the dressing room.

“It's a good advantage for us but we created it, we made it happen,” Bitton said.

“I think after the Old Firm game before the winter break everyone killed us. Everyone wanted us to fail.

“But it's a winning mentality around the dressing room around, around the club, it is the belief.

“And we knew that if we're going to do things right, we're going to come back stronger.

“We don't care about other teams we don't care about what people outside the club are saying, we concentrate on ourselves. I think we know that if we do things right, it's very difficult to play against us.

“It's very difficult to match our play because we have good players all around the pitch, we have good players on the bench we can change the game for us.

“This is a special, special club to be at."

Bitton was disappointed to drop points at Livingston for the second time this season on Wednesday night, but he says the Celtic players have become accustomed to the opposition treating games against them like cup finals.

“Every away game in the Scottish league is difficult,” he said.

“Everyone wants to stop us, everyone wants to beat us, to be the hero, and we need to need to accept it,

“We need to face it, we need to match it and we do it, we do it every week and just need to keep going.”