Hoops Must Deliver, Warns Brown

Celtic captain Scott Brown has told his team-mates there are "no excuses" now the transition period is over. Brown made his first appearance of the season in Celtic's 2-1 Scottish Premiership win over Aberdeen on Saturday after a torn hamstring ruled him out of Ronny Deila's difficult start as manager. The victory over the Dons was Celtic's first in five games and supporters are still reeling from their failure to qualify for the Champions League against Maribor despite an initial reprieve following an administrative error by Legia Warsaw. But Celtic can give Deila a much-needed boost if they get their Europa League campaign off to a winning start when they take on Salzburg in Austria on Thursday. Brown, who was speaking to promote BT Sport's exclusively live coverage of the game, said: "It's always hard when a new manager comes in and has three weeks before his first Champions League qualifier. "Ever since then, I have seen glimpses of how we are going to play and we are getting better and better every game. "Now we have to put it into 90 minutes and not just 60 or 70. "You have to have faith in him. Everyone sees the good football we are trying to play. It's all going to come together as soon as possible and hopefully that will be Thursday. "It's just been getting used to the new shape and new players. Now the transfer window is closed, that's our squad settled. We've got no excuses now. "We have to try and push on and start playing the football we know we can play. We did really well against Aberdeen and those three points were a boost." Brown believes the Europa League campaign - where they will also face Dinamo Zagreb and Romanians Astra Giurgiu - has the potential to define Celtic's season. Celtic reached the UEFA Cup final in 2003 after a surprise Champions League qualifying defeat by Basle earlier in the season. The Scotland midfielder said: "We are still disappointed that we didn't get into the Champions League. "We have to go out there and show we are a good team and we can play against these teams home and away. "When you saw the sights, there were over 200,000 Celtic fans in Seville, they were saying. It would be great to do that again but we're not going to get too far ahead of ourselves, we have to take it game by game and see how we do. "Seville was a huge day for the club and we'd love to bring memories like that back again but we have to take it one game at a time and do as well as we can in the group. "We've got a big squad now, new wingers and a couple of new strikers. They are looking good in training so hopefully they can take that into games." :: BT Sport has live coverage of UEFA Europa League games throughout the group stages and beyond, including Salzburg v Celtic this Thursday on BT Sport 1 (not in Republic of Ireland). Visit www.btsport.com to find out more.