Callum McGregor cannot wait to take to the field tomorrow night in front of the first sell-out crowd at Celtic Park since March 2020.
The last time McGregor played with 60,000 fans he wasn’t captain, either – Scott Brown still had the armband that season. Yet, in the developments that have followed, Brown has departed for Pittodrie, with McGregor taking his place as skipper.
And with the team finally starting to click, McGregor told the media in the pre-match press conference that he and his team mates cannot wait for the game to commence.
We’re absolutely buzzing for it, and off the back of the weekend where we had a good performance and a good result – it was a great experience for all the new players. We’re absolutely desperate and ready to go, and we can’t wait to have a full house back.
We want to enjoy it, enjoy the atmosphere, give the supporters a right good performance and finish the job and get into the next round.
It’s been so long since we’ve had a full house at Celtic Park, so it’s a brilliant opportunity to get the supporters back in to enjoy the football, and it’s also a brilliant opportunity for the boys to experience and feel a full crowd again.
So we’re very much looking forward to it and the boys are desperate for kick-off to come. All the preparations have been done, we go out, we earn the right to play, we show high energy and we have a good night – that’s our focus and we’re just desperate to get a full house again.
It helps that the side are playing like the Celtic team we are all used to. Had results been going poorly for The Bhoys’, it may not have been an exciting return to proceedings. But, with the 6-0 drubbing of Dundee and the 4-2 win over Jablonec, the goals are flowing – with McGregor reminding his team mates to not let these performance standards slip.
What I said to the players will remain private but it’s just good to show the togetherness.
We’ve got a lot of new players experiencing Celtic Park for the first time in a league match. It was a good performance and a good result, and it was just important that they feel the importance of winning, of winning at Celtic Park in style, and we just continue that.
We continue to work so hard in training, and in the games we perform as best as we can, and we’ll try and send the supporters home happy every week if we can. We always thanks the fans for their support, win, lose or draw, and we’ll always do that, and I just thought it was nice to show that togetherness on the pitch.
