CHRISTOPHER JULLIEN says he wasn’t affected by the sight of Celtic fans protesting after the defeat to Ross County, but insists the players who have delivered long-term success for the club deserved better.
The defender felt for players like captain Scott Brown as well as manager Neil Lennon, saying that those who have been integral to the trophy-laden run of the last nine years should be afforded more respect from supporters.
And he has moved to reassure those fans that the entire Celtic squad and backroom staff fully believe that they will still win the league title this season.
“It was not scary for me,” Jullien said. “I think that’s football and, at the end of the day, as a player you can’t control that sort of stuff.
“Even so, I was a bit hurt for the manager and for players like Broony, Callum (McGregor), Tom (Rogic) and Jamesy (Forrest), people who had been there for the last nine years: I felt pain for them because they definitely deserve to be treated better than that.
“How can you compare nine years of trophies against one month of losing? And it’s not as though we’ve lost our [main] goal – yes, our unbeaten cup run has gone but our top [priority] is far from finished.
“I understand that we’ve had one month when the results haven’t been what we wanted. But everyone is here is so disappointed when we lose a game.
“We go home and have some nights when we aren’t sleeping, just thinking about how we need to do better – and how we can do better.
“In this difficult month, I haven’t seen one person come here to the training centre with their head down. Everyone comes here wanting to improve after we have a bad game.
“So, we try to improve – and we know that this streak is going to come to an end. Momentum is going to come back our way. I trust everyone here.
“And I hope that everyone at Celtic knows we’re going to come back strong, we’ll be as good as everyone wants. Things are going to be fine.
“[The manager]’s been unbelievable. He’s a great man and a great coach and I’m just so happy to have him on my side.
“He knows that we all back him and that we are all with him and that everyone at the club is behind us – this is the respect we have for each other and I’m glad it is that way.”
The recent poor run has done nothing to dent Jullien’s confidence that more silverware is heading the way of the Celtic trophy cabinet.
“We know that this month is really important because we can make more history for the club [against Hearts], plus we still have a lot of games to play in the league,” he said.
“We have to battle against our biggest opponent, which is Rangers. We all know that you can’t win championships in November or December - you win it in May, so we’ll see.
“When we look in each other’s eyes, we see only that we want to win the championship – and we believe we’re going to do it.
“We’re going to win the championship. That’s the mentality we have when we come into training every day.”
Though the winning touch may have deserted Celtic of late, Jullien says the winning mentality remains, even as they approach what - for them - is a dead rubber against AC Milan tonight.
“I never go into any game thinking I am going to lose or draw,” he said. “We come into the training centre every day to accomplish something and this morning we trained hard with a view to winning tomorrow night.
“We will do everything we can to make that happen.”
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