Celtic groaners urged to put it in perspective despite having reason to despair
Carter-Vickers understands frustration but believes team is having fine season
Perspective. It is a commodity in short supply among football supporters, especially when playing at a club with such lofty expectations as Celtic.
However, defender Cameron Carter-Vickers is putting recent defeats into context. The runaway Premiership leaders have lost two of their past three matches against Rangers and St Johnstone, with last week's 1-0 reversal from the league's bottom club bringing stinging criticism from fans, pundits and even manager Brendan Rodgers, who was far from enamoured by his team's display.
Yet the fact remains that defending champions Celtic have a 13-point lead and can win the title this weekend should they beat Kilmarnock at home on Saturday lunchtime and Rangers lose at Aberdeen 24 hours later. With the Premier Sports Cup already in the satchel and a domestic treble very much on the cards, Celtic hope that their recent run of form is a minor blip in an otherwise impressive campaign.
"I think everyone knows, ideally, you want to get things wrapped up as soon as possible," said Carter-Vickers. "That's what we're trying to do. But, like I kind of mentioned last week, nine times out of ten, if you have those chances, you win that game. And this whole conversation is not even happening now.
"And that's football. That's why we love the sport. That's why a team can be on top for 80 minutes and still lose a game. And that's why people watch it, because it's unpredictable. So, as well as I completely understand the emotion of losing a game, of course, when the final whistle goes last weekend, I'm annoyed, we're all annoyed. But I think at some point you have to kind of have a bigger perspective of the whole scenario and where you're at in the season.
"And I think it's a fairly positive position. I think I've got a fairly good perspective of things. But I completely understand the emotion that people have in this sport and how it's quite for a negative result, you're then feeling negative about things until there's a positive result. I understand that.
"But at the beginning of the season, our goals are to, obviously, win all the competitions domestically and have a good showing in Europe. We've got one cup in the bag so far, in a good position to get two more trophies domestically. I think our Champions League campaign was a decent one and I thought we were showed we could compete at that level."
Carter-Vickers' words are true but at Celtic, the demands are to win and win well every week. That's why Rodgers was so disappointed with how events at McDiarmid Park panned out.
"The manager, he's the one in charge," added Carter-Vickers. "We all listen to what he has to say and take it on board. I guess he's not had reason to do it too much since he's been back. There were times last season where we didn't perform the way he wanted us to. I was aware that he had that side to him. So, it wasn't a surprise.
"I think, personally, you look at the game last weekend. We created more than enough chances to win that game. Obviously, it didn't start ideal conceding. But, after that point, I thought we created, we hit the post. Reo [Hatate] had one. He flashed over from close to the goal and a few other chances.
"So, we created more than enough chances to win that game. I think, nine times out of ten, if you create those chances, you do win that game. So, result-wise, it's not a positive one. But, performance-wise, it wasn't terrible, in my opinion."
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