CELTIC manager Martin O'Neill has said Sunday's first league meeting of the season with Rangers is not make-or-break.
The Hoops are five points clear of both Rangers and Hearts, with the Jambos having played a game more, and a win would extend Celtic's lead to eight points after just seven games.
However, their 100 per cent record in the league doesn't tell the whole story as a loss at Celtic Park would mark a third consecutive defeat in all competitions.
Ominously, the first of those came last week against Sunday's opponents when Celtic failed to lay a glove on Rangers in a 3-0 League Cup quarter-final loss at Ibrox.
The Hoops then hosted Hungarian side Ferencvaros in their Europa League opener as they lost 3-1, with former Celtic player Daniel Arzani on the scoresheet.
'Players capable of turning it around'
O'Neill said that while he would obviously prefer his side to head into a three-week international break with a win, it was not a defining game whatever the result.
"I think it's too early in the season to do that, I genuinely do think that," he said.
"I mean, it's not the thing that you would be look forward to, going into an international break on three successive defeats, if that's the case.
"But we're going to try and remedy that, we're going to try and put that right if we can.
"The last time that we had an international break was in March time and we played very poorly against Dundee United [losing 2-0].
"That was, if you can call it, a wake-up call or a moment of quiet reflection or whatever the case may be.
"We turned it around — the players are capable of turning it around."
He added: "It's a big game. It's a big game whether it's played in September or March time. It's a really big game and we need to be up for the game.
"Do we need to win the game? It would be nice to win it.
"It wouldn't be great if we lost, that would be three on the trot and of course, psychologically, it would be a blow. But we need to be up for it."
'Systems don't win football games'
O'Neill is still trying to integrate a raft of summer signings into his squad and has had to deal with the loss of winger Hyunjun Yang, who is at the Asian Games with South Korea.
While the club has experienced success over recent years with a 4-3-3 formation, O'Neill switched to a 4-4-2 at half-time in the Ferencvaros game when 2-1 down.
They conceded quickly after the restart with the game ending 3-1 but O'Neill said it was important for his team to be able to play a number of systems.
He said such flexibility was important to both play to his own side's strengths and to adapt to the opposition, particularly with sides in Scotland more frequently playing adventurous, attacking football against stronger sides rather than parking the bus.
"Systems don't actually win the football games for you, the matches do," he said.
"That does not mean that you can't formulate something and even when we went 4-4-2 [against Ferencvaros] for the second half, they scored immediately.
"That's nothing to do with us playing 4-4-2. I thought we had a lot of possession, huffed and puffed a little bit, but we had a lot of possession in in the second half without making a great deal of use to it."
He added: "First of all, you try and find a devise a system that the players are comfortable with.
"The system here for quite a number of years has been 4-3-3 and it's been pretty successful, so you don't really want to interfere.
"I said this last season, but there are times when you have to adjust to the opposition and also to the way that we're playing ourselves.
"I think it's something that we can improvise. We haven't had the time to do it because we've had a number of players who have come in late into the football club but there's opportunities for us to do it.
"Just because the system has been successful, it might have been successful because the opposition that we we're playing against stayed back and allowed you to dominate the games.
"I think that the teams now, some of the sides that we've played against — St Mirren and St Johnstone for instance — want to play themselves not being fearful, which is great for the league.
"Those things you have to take into consideration as well and I think if you're absolutely stuck to one system, I don't think that that's going to work in the long term."
Celtic face Rangers in the Scottish Premiership at Celtic Park on Sunday, September 20, kick-off at 12pm BST.
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