Craig Gordon is looking forward to the real Celtic emerging after the winter break.
A string of draws and a 4-0 defeat away to Hearts has left Brendan Rodgers’ side eight points clear and offered some encouragement to their rivals.
Celtic have beaten Aberdeen eight times out of eight since the Irishman took charge but points dropped elsewhere has kept the gap at the top in single figures.
Asked about opponents gaining encouragement from Celtic’s faltering form the keeper told the Daily Record: “We’ll see, I’m looking forward to the second half of the season. If they think they have us sussed, well, I’m looking forward to that.
“I think it will be a good challenge to come out second half of the season and really push on and be dominant.
“We want to improve our game to make sure that, whatever anyone throws at us, we have the answers.
“We have played a lot of games and we now have this break to get the team back to doing the things we do really well. It’s also tactically about getting wee reminders of how we go about playing, our defensive structure and how we translate that into attack.
“We can work on that this week. We’ll be doing long sessions working hard on our teamwork so that when we come back, we’ll see that we have improved in a lot of areas.
“I think this week will be vitally important in terms of the second half of the season.
“We’ve got a two-week period now until we get back into games and we will be doing a lot of coaching sessions. We don’t get an awful lot of time to do that when there is so many games.
“The manager will get to work with the team and work positionally with us on how we want to go about playing in the second half of the season. That’s the most important part of being out here.”
Celtic return to face Brechin City a week on Saturday in the Scottish Cup but the standard quickly moves up when Hearts and Hibs visit Glasgow before the end of January.
While the winter break is very welcome Celtic could be returning to more fixtures than they had last season due to their involvement in the Europa League.
Two matches against Zenit St Petersburg are guaranteed with Rodgers hopeful of an extended run in the competition after securing third place in Champions League Group B ahead of Anderlecht.
