CRAIG Gordon last night warned his Celtic team-mates that Brendan Rodgers will move on anyone who isn’t cutting it at the champions.

Too many fringe players are not stepping up when given their chance, which is what happened when Celtic went down 2-0 to a Hibs side missing seven first-team players.

Goalkeeper Gordon has been at the club long enough to know that it’s not an environment suitable to any players who cannot make a significant contribution.

And hinted that such under-performers will soon find themselves shipped out – perhaps as early as next month.

Gordon said: “It’s up to the manager to decide what he wants in his squad and the positions we have to improve on.

“The guys who are here have to step up and make sure they are in the manager’s plans, especially leading up to January.

“So it’s up to us to make sure our performances are good because at a club this big, if you’re performances are not up to scratch for a period of time then you can get replaced.

“We have to make sure we work hard enough to stay in the team and deliver the results the manager, the club and the fans want.

“Do I expect him to be busy in January? I don’t know, I don’t know what his plans to bring players in are. “I think he will want to do that but we will have to see what happens when that time comes.

“We will see who comes in and who goes. Then we have to start the second half of the season looking to go on a run again.

“There are a lot of games and we are going to have to use a lot of players. We’re going to have to try and have a strong end to the month now. There are still a lot of games and a lot of points to play for between now and then. We have to look to take as many as we possibly can to put us I a good place for the second half of the season.”

Remarkably, eight points separate the top eight in the Premiership.

Scottish football has never seen so many teams so close together at this stage of the season since the 1980s and Gordon admitted that Celtic can't expect to be handed anything.

He said: "We just have to win as many matches as we can, nobody here is getting ahead of ourselves.

“We go into every game trying to win it, but to do that you have to win the battle and fight every single week.

“To play the way we want to you have to win those battles first and when you don’t do that, you see what happens today.

“The league is strong, there are a lot of teams capable of winning games.

“You probably only have three teams who are down at the bottom and the rest are all capable of taking points from the big games.

“Even last weekend Dundee took a point from Rangers, so the bottom clubs are even starting to pick up points.

“The league is tight all the way through it, so it’s tough and we have to get back to working hard enough to earn the right to win points."