THE first rule of sealing a league title, it seems, is to never mention the league title. You would have a better chance of teasing an admission from a Celtic player that he had posters of Ally McCoist on his wall as a child than getting him to give a favourable assessment of their likelihood of landing a ninth title in a row.

They are not alone in this. In fact, their captain Scott Brown cites the example of Liverpool – who hold a 22-point lead in the English Premier League – as the template for the single-mindedness currently being shown by the Celtic players when it comes to shunning talk of the title.

The EPL champions-elect saw their long unbeaten record come to an end at the weekend with a shock defeat at Watford, and Brown knows if such a blip can happen to the Anfield superstars, then it can happen to Celtic. That is why he is reminding his teammates to remain focused on the immediate task at hand at Livingston tonight, and avoid all talk of their current advantageous position at the top of the Premiership pile.

“[Shocks] can happen,” Brown said. “Watford are a well organised team as well. You know how good Liverpool are and how well they have done this season.

“They have not said once they are going to win the league. That says it all about their mentality.

“Their manager has drilled it in to them about taking one step at a time. That’s what our manager has drilled into us as well.”

Of course, Brown and his teammates know from first-hand experience how difficult it is to get a result at the Toni Macaroni Arena, with their 2-0 reverse there in the autumn the only away defeat they have suffered so far this season.

But it is the way you respond to such setbacks, says Brown, that marks you out as potential champions.

“It’s football, you’re not going to win every game and get everything the way you want it,” he said.

“You have to work hard, and sometimes somebody is going to score a goal or take a chance and beat you.

“It’s all about how you bounce back, that’s what makes strong mentalities and that’s what a lot of these lads have got.

“You get one knock back, but you bounce forward four or five steps, and that’s what we believe in.

“Football is based on everyone making a mistake now and then, we’re not robots, we’re not perfect.

“It’s about how we bounce back, and we are willing to work harder than anybody else.

“It was one result in a long season. For us, it’s a long year and anything can happen in football. If you start worrying about results that happened two or three games ago, that’s when the form hits rock bottom.

“We just continue looking forward. We don’t speak about matches 10 games ahead, like we’ll deal with the semi-final [against Aberdeen] when it comes around.

“It always hurts losing. The one in Europe [against Copenhagen] hurt and the Livingston one was hard as well because it was before the international break and we had two weeks to think about it.

“You get that time off, but the main thing is you think about how you played, you get sent the video analysis and look can look at your own performance or pick out bits and bobs.

“You can’t dwell on it, or over criticise, for too long. You do that and you start to think it could be a bad week, or a bad month.

“You just think, let’s not do this or that again, let’s work on it and do better.

“It’s a checklist. We’re not perfect and you’re not going to get a 10 out of 10 performance every week. People will make mistakes, there will be a bad pass or a bad tackle. It’s about how you react, recover and learn from it.”

As always when a side visits Livingston, some of the pre-match preamble focused on the artificial surface, but having safely negotiated Sunday’s cup-tie on the quagmire of a grass surface at McDiarmid Park, Brown isn’t unduly concerned about stepping onto the plastic this evening.

“It was always going to be hard [at St Johnstone] and the pitch was terrible, but we worked hard and played to the conditions,” he said.

“Their goalie was unbelievable to be fair, the amount of saves he made and the amount of clearances and last-ditch tackles they made as well.

“We got a little bit lucky with Ryan (Christie)’s free-kick. It’s one of those ones that the manager always talks about, hitting it between the posts and aiming for that back post.

“Sometimes if it misses everyone it can go in the back of the net, and that’s kind of what happens.

“It was maybe going to be the only way we scored, because Ryan had a couple of chances before that and the goalie has made some great saves.

“At least the ball will roll a wee bit better at Livingston.

“It’s always hard going on to astro when they train and play on it all the time, but we just have to make sure we’re ready and we start the game better than we did the last time.”