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Ange Postecoglou admitted Celtic made “terrible” errors against AZ Alkmaar.
But he was delighted with the way his layers stood up to the pressure and secured qualification fr the Europa League group stages.
Kyogo Furuhashi ‘s early goal was the perfect start, but mistakes from Joe Hart and Carl Starfelt allowed AZ to turn the game on its head and cut the Hoops lead to just one goal on aggregate.
And they were forced to defend it right to the end as the hosts put them under the cosh at times.
Postecoglou refused to dig his men out for their blunders though and praised the team’s reaction.
“We made two pretty terrible errors but that’s what happens when you’re dealing with human beings,” he told BBC Scotland.
“They’re going to make mistakes but what was more important for me was how we reacted.
“We lost our way in the first-half trying to recover from that and they got some momentum.
“But we started the game well, apart from the goal we started playing really brightly.
“Obviously giving away two goals set us back but in the second-half we dug in when we had to.
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“Joe was disappointed with the first half mistake but made a couple of outstanding saves. Carl defended really strongly in the second half.
“Mistakes are part of the nature of football, it’s the reaction to them that’s important.”
Greg Taylor was forced off early with a shoulder problem and Furuhashi was limping before he was replaced late on.
Postecoglou admits they’ll be assessed ahead of Sunday’s Premiership clash with Rangers.
He added: “We’ll have to see. Greg’s got a shoulder problem and we don’t know the extent of it.
“We’ve got a pretty quick turnaround so we’ll have to see whether he recovers in time.
“Monty was outstanding coming on, a young player knowing we’re going to have to defend a fair bit of the game.
“He did an outstanding job.
“The rest of them… Kyogo got a bit of a knock. We put in a big shift so it’s going to be about recovery in the next 24, 48 hours and we’ll see how everyone is.”
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