Callum McGregor has hailed Martin O’Neill’s influence following Celtic’s thrilling 3-1 victory over theRangers at Hampden on Sunday…
The Celtic captain’s influential performance led the Hoops to a 3-1 victory in extra time against a 10-man theRangers side, sending O’Neill’s men through to the League Cup final.
In a controversial Glasgow derby semi-final at Hampden, goals from Johnny Kenny, McGregor, and Callum Osmand were enough to seal a first victory in this fixture for Celtic in 11 months.
Ultimately, O’Neill’s rejuvenated Hoops came out on top and are set to take on St Mirren on Sunday, December 14 at the National Stadium.
Speaking in the mixed-zone post-match, McGregor said this about Martin O’Neill: “He’s been great. He’s someone with huge experience who has been around the block so many times and is a really calm influence.
“He was exceptional again. He asked for intensity from the players, and I think in the first half, you could see we pretty much won every duel, every first ball, and every second ball. We were excellent, so he was a big part of that as well. He’s a real calm head and just asked us to go and play, believe in ourselves, and that we’d win the game.”
The Celtic skipper added: “You want to work with top managers, and he’s someone who’s been around the block a fair few times. With his experience, he’s managed at such a high level. Since he’s come in, he’s just pumped everybody full of confidence. The players feel good, they want to run and fight, and that’s exactly what you need in this game. He’s been excellent since he came in.
“It’s a collective effort – always has been, and always will be,” McGregor added. “The staff behind the manager have been so good this week. Just having that continuity of message, training level, everything is all interconnected.”
“The manager can’t do it on his own; he needs his backroom staff in the same way the players can’t do it on their own; they need everybody. It’s a real collective effort, and that’s something I’m super proud of from the last week.”
Celtic’s attention now turns to Thursday evening’s match against Europa League front runners FC Midtjylland in Denmark as Celtic look to close the gap on the current leaders to just two points.
Conor Spence
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3 words stick out within calmac comments.
1) Intensity, Rodgers asked for it,but wasn’t getting delivered, with ourselves becoming to soft to play against
2) Confidence, a huge drop in so many of our players, especially with adopting the continously safe passing with backwards and sideways passing, going nowhere in return
3) collective, there was little to no signs of this actually in operation, despite Rodgers claims that the spirit in the squad was good. Added in that there seemed like nothing was getting resolved within our coaching department either imo.
As to why?
Possibly will remain a secret, and becoming less interested in to the answer now.
We still find ourselves in a position of playing catch up, in the 2 matches this week.
So with a rejuvenated Calmac, along with so many of our players now, we still have to continue with the consistency factor in delivering the results required for ourselves.
Looking far better than a couple of weeks ago, but still a huge amount of work required for our squad, manager and coaching staff all the same.