Celtic captain Scott Brown has hit back at the criticism he received for a picture that emerged on social media during the Hoops' trip to Dubai.

An image did the rounds on Twitter and showed Parkhead boss Neil Lennon and Brown having a beer while sunbathing at their UAE hotel.

Brown tried to explain the photo upon his return to Scotland. He said: "Everyone is going to question everything - that’s the modern-day era.

"Everyone has a say in everything we do these days.

“We got the okay from the government and we made sure we followed the guidelines from there.

"We went out and worked hard on training - that’s what the whole thing was for us.

“People don’t see our training daily or see how hard we worked.

"Sometimes you’re allowed to sit on the sunbeds and have some down-time as well.

“What we do away from the cameras in training is for us to benefit in games.

"As you’ve seen in the last three or four seasons, we’ve come back from Dubai and done really well because we work extremely hard.

“It’s all about the preparation for the next five or six months of the season.

"The manager’s philosophy, which he puts on to us, is how we can work in different ways and different shapes.

“We worked on that all week and that’s what Dubai has been for us in the last three or four seasons now.”