OLI BURKE has put aside the disappointment of Celtic’s Europa League exit in the Mestalla on Thursday night and now wants to focus on winning the Scottish Premiership and the Scottish Cup.
Picking up two major honours and having the two medals to show for his loan spell in Glasgow – if it is to end in the summer – is now the clear ambition for the winger come striker who is on loan from West Brom.
“It would be a dream for me,” Oli said to the media.
“We focus on the league now and it is foot on the gas. We won’t stop now and it’s an amazing position for me. We are doing very well at the moment in domestic football but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.
‘We have our feet firmly on the ground and just focus on each game as it comes. As long as we do that, we know we can beat anybody. A chance to win things was in my thoughts when I came here but it was also down to the manager.
“He persuaded me a lot to come here. Also I knew some of the boys already so I feel very happy at Celtic. It is a fantastic club with fantastic fans and staff so I am really enjoying myself,” Burke said.
Brendan has been speaking to the media too, as we reported last night…
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His form at Celtic hasn’t gone unnoticed by the national team boss Alex McLeish and getting back into the Scotland set-up because of his form at Celtic would be an added bonus for Burke.
“I’ve been starved of football in the recent past so getting back into the Scotland set-up wasn’t possible,” Burke explained.
“Now I’ve had a run of games it is a case of fingers crossed. Let’s just see what happens.
“It is definitely something I have got my eye on. It is a dream come true to represent your country. As I say, we’ll see what happens. I have to keep performing well and producing to earn any call-up.
“I’m happy now and enjoying my football and want to kick on.”
Burke looked back on the disappointment on Thursday night but reckoned that Celtic played very well and were unlucky to lose the game, particularly as the key incident in the match – the soft second booking for Jerry Toljan on 38 minutes, seemed particularly harsh. These foreign referees right?
“The manager was very happy with us even though we lost. The referee killed us really, given the sending off,” Burke said.
“I don’t think it was a sending off. It was disappointing because it killed our game.
“Even then we did really well. We had to work even harder when we were down to 10 men but credit to the team.
“Our gameplan was working but that decision was vital and changed things completely. It’s really disappointing that something like that happened but we can be proud of the performance.
“Jeremy was very disappointed but I wouldn’t be too down if I was him. If he looks back at the incident he will know it wasn’t the right decision and we just move on now.
“The game is done. We can keep our heads up after that performance and go back into the league with great confidence. Motherwell will be a test but we know we can beat anybody.”
