Celtic's 'big man will be fine' as dressing room left unequivocal over excuses
Celtic skipper Callum McGregor has urged the fans to stick with the team after a difficult night in the Champions League.
Callum McGregor says the Celtic players will only have themselves to blame if they don’t qualify for the Champions League this season - but insists they’ll have a better chance of doing so if everybody sticks together.
A sub-standard performance from Brendan Rodgers’ side saw them struggle to break down a stubborn Kairat Almaty in the Champions League play-off round first leg on Wednesday, where the visitors battled hard in order to take a 0-0 draw back to Kazakhstan ahead of next week’s crucial second leg.
“First-half, we were too slow,” admitted McGregor. “We were stuck on the side a bit, nothing really connecting. The whole second-half we were pretty much in total control of the game, just trying to find that moment of quality to open up the game for us. If we’d have done that, we’d have got two and maybe another one. We have to find the moment, and now we have to go away; it is a shootout tie. It probably makes it a bit easier, the fact that the mindset is you have to go there and win the game, or else you’re out. That’s the simple message.”
Next week’s clash in Almaty will see Celtic embark on one of the longest journeys in the competition, with a 10-hour flight anticipated in order to reach the 23,804 capacity Central Stadium in Almaty, but McGregor insists the team have not use tiredness as an excuse.
“Everyone in there needs to be positive [next week], or else it won’t happen,” said McGregor. “It’s Champions League football, you have two legs to win the game. If we win 1-0 tonight, I think everybody is buzzing, so we have to keep a lid on that. We have to go there and try and open the game, and ultimately get the win. You have to block out the noise and perform. If we perform, then we’ll win.
“It’s difficult [the travel to Almaty]. There’ll be things put in place, and people trying to help us. But ultimately we have to be ready we have to be ready when we go on the pitch. There’s no excuse. If we don’t win the game, then that is on us. We don’t need or want excuses. We are a team that wants to be in the Champions League. We didn’t perform tonight as well as we could have in the first-half. Second-half was a lot better, but we want to be in the Champions League - if we want it, we have to go and do it.”
McGregor also addressed the decision to substitute misfiring striker Adam Idah at half-time. The Republic of Ireland international has bagged 24 goals for Celtic since arriving at the club 18 months ago, but is yet to open his account in the new season, and has appeared a little short on confidence in the opening weeks of the campaign.
“Everybody looks at strikers and they think they need a goal,” said the skipper. “The big man’s started well, worked hard for the team, but tonight just wasn’t his night, so the manager went for something a bit different, maybe more pace through the middle of the pitch. The big man will be fine. He’ll come back in and train, and we’ll get him on the pitch at the weekend, and hopefully he gets that goal.
“But it is not just on Adam. The team need to function properly, get him the right chances to get that goal. It is a team thing, so it is never one individual. We have to be connected, give him the chances, then it is up to him to finish them. But we didn’t do that first-half. We have to stick together, that’s the strength of this club. Even in the bad moments, we have to stick together.
“We’ll go home tonight, and we’ll be upset about the game as well. We are all in it together; we all feel the same pain. It’s a massive 10 days for the club; we need to stay positive. We’ve had a lot of success for a long time, and that has come from everyone being together. It doesn’t change because we drew the game tonight.”
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