Callum McGregor spoke yesterday at Lennoxtown ahead of this evening’s Premiership match in Paisley – weather permitting of course! The Celtic players have a quick opportunity to pay St Mirren back for their well deserved win at Parkhead last weekend, when Celtic were frankly awful. But wins against Kilmarnock and Motherwell have raised hopes that the team can indeed go on a decent run until the end of the season and in doing so reduce the gap significantly at the top of the table.
Any credibility that has to be re-gained really will need wins in every remaining Premiership match – it is now doubtful after the latest Scottish FA statement released yesterday that the Scottish Cup will be played this season so it looks like. these league games are all that Celtic have to focus on. Self respects dictates that the players should win them all.
“The two wins have been good,” McGregor, the stand-in skipper when Scott Brown is not in the team, said to the official Celtic website. “We’re trying to build a bit of momentum but it’s important for us to stay calm, keep working and do the right things that have got us the results.
“It’s a game at a time and we just need to keep ticking them off one-by-one. It’s important that we stay focused and hungry and keep trying to win football games.
“Every game at Celtic, you’re expected to win, no matter what and no matter who the opponent is. When you lose, it’s always a shock result. Like the manager said, the performance last time wasn’t good enough and we know that, everybody was below par.
“It’s a game at a time and we just need to keep ticking them off one-by-one. It’s important that we stay focused and hungry and keep trying to win football games,” McGregor added.
“Playing game to game starts tomorrow night. We have to go there, we have to perform well, show that hunger to win the match and then we’ll see where we are after the game tomorrow night. But it’s vital that, first of all, we start looking after ourselves again and looking at performance levels and we’ll see where we are come the end of the season. Our main focus is to get back to playing well.”
On the revenge mission against St Mirren, McGregor had no doubts on what is required. “We have to be more aggressive in the game, in terms of running ability off the ball. When we got the stats back from the game, it was clear that we weren’t quite on it,” the Celtic midfield star said.
“We have to go there, we have to perform well, show that hunger to win the match and then we’ll see where we are after the game tomorrow night.
“Credit to St Mirren, they were excellent that day, they played some good football, and it was a tough day for us.
“We have to try and right that by being aggressive when we get the ball, keep the tempo of the game high, and, ultimately, we need to win the match. We need to do all of these things right if we want to do that.
“Jim’s did some really good work there, and you can see it on the pitch. You can see the way the play, the way they want to play, even from their goal kicks, their organisation is excellent as well.
“You can see what he’s trying to implement. The last one was a difficult game for us, and we need to come up with a game plan to win tomorrow night.”
Callum McGregor spoke to the Mainstream Media yesterday – annoyingly the Celtic Fans media remains excluded from these media events – and you can watch this below. Think how different the questions would be if the fans media were involved…
