Callum McGregor looked back on Celtic’s return to winning ways on Thursday night with the 3-2 win over Lille bringing an end to a horrendous run of form and hopefully setting Celtic up for an attempt at salvaging the season with two Scottish Cup wins and a Premiership title still to be played for.
The Europa win on Thursday also brings in around half a million pounds in additional prize money, reversing the negative trend for the club in all revenue streams. The posts last week by the club re the Celtic store re-opening etc were all met with pretty horrible responses on social media with anger and frustration at the poor run of results boiling over.
“It’s nice to have that more familiar feeling back,” McGregor told the official Celtic site. “There have been very small margins in the games, and when you’re in a rut like that, confidence is low. It’s nice to get the win. It changes everyone’s mentality, the feel-good factor and everyone comes in over the next couple of days with a spring in the step and looking forward to the game on Sunday.
“It’s only human nature that, when you lose a game, you feel a bit of pressure. Naturally, people feel down about themselves and the confidence isn’t quite the same.
“Football’s a confidence game. Players thrive on having confidence and winning games, so it’s important we build on this now. We have a good feeling about us, the players worked hard for the win and we got what we deserved. The main thing is, we stay humble and go again.”
After the performance against Lille, McGregor is in a confident mood ahead of the visit of Kilmarnock tomorrow and believes the likes of Turnbull and Ismaila Soro have made a claim for a place on Neil Lennon’s starting eleven. Incidentally Conor Hazard and Ewan Henderson also have worthy claims.
“We have to take this feeling into Sunday now, that’s the most important game and we have to go and win that,” he said.
“The guys who came in were asked to play at a very high level and they did exactly that. They’ve staked a claim for the weekend and that’s exactly what we need, we need everybody at the top of their game and super motivated to go on a run now. With the number of good players we have playing at a high level, that’s going to benefit us as well.
“This is a big week and first and foremost, Sunday is the most important game. Our full focus is on Sunday now.”
Watch Callum McGregor’s Media Conference below…
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