Callum McGregor reckons Celtic are not out the title race despite the Hoops’ 2-1 defeat to Hibs over the weekend but there are now big upcoming games the Hoops simply have to win…
Celtic’s setback against Hibs – their seventh Premiership defeat of the campaign – dealt a serious blow to their bid to retain the title for a fifth consecutive season, especially after leaders Hearts secured a 1-0 victory over Falkirk while the Ibrox club dropped points at Livingston.
The champions now trail the Jambos by six points, although they do have a match in hand going into Sunday’s pivotal Glasgow Derby encounter.
Skipper Callum McGregor acknowledged the scale of the challenge facing the team, admitting they are in a fierce battle to stay in contention and may need to win every one of their remaining 11 fixtures to keep their hopes alive.
Speaking via Daily Record, McGregor said: “By far, we’re not out of the title race at all. We’ve put ourselves under pressure, we need to win some big games that are coming up.”
“But that’s not beyond us, we’ve been doing that all season and we’ve been doing it for the last few years. So we have that experience in the bank. If both teams won I don’t think anybody would be saying there’s any change.”
“The league is competitive, the top four, five, six teams are all good teams. And like I said, we’ve put ourselves under pressure to win some big games that normally you can afford draws here and there.”
“But I think now we have to pretty much win every game. But there will be twists and turns, so the one thing for sure is that we have to stick together.”
“I know there’ll be a lot of anger and disappointment, but we’re a long way from home. We have to keep going, we have to keep fighting and we will do that.”
Celtic return to action in Thursday night’s dead-rubber against VfB Stuttgart in Germany. Everything must now be geared towards Sunday in what is a must-win for the players.
Conor Spence
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