Why rewatching Celtic's mauling in Madrid wasn't hard for Cameron Carter-Vickers

The required rewatch of Celtic’s 6-0 mauling by Atletico Madrid for those on the receiving end could feel like the footballing equivalent of waterboarding.

Celtic's Cameron Carter-Vickers says the fact the squad are an "honest group" helps them to handle a result like their thumping in Madrid. (Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group)

Yet Cameron Carter-Vickers sees picking over Tuesday’s Champions League blow-out in the Spanish capital differently. Sure, in one sense, it wasn’t exactly an occasion to crack open the popcorn as Brendan Rodgers’ men’s necessary debrief demanded they “looked back” and determined “where we went wrong and what we could do better”. But, the US international believes that the strength of the Scottish champions is their ability to retain their equilibrium in the face of any setbacks - not that he had ever suffered as heavy a loss in his two-and-a-bit years playing for the Glasgow club. The US international accepting that, though he feels his team “competed fairly well” with “11 versus 11” despite the loss of an early goal, they could have dealt with the “situation” they were left in following Daizen Maeda’s controversial 23rd mnute red card “a bit better”.

“Personally, I never get too high when we win games or too low when we don’t. I think that is the only way you can be when you have a game every three or four days,” said the 25-year-old ahead of Sunday’s hosting of Aberdeen that will be give way to a two-week international break. “By the time we come to look at the game, we do it in an unemotional way and just look at what we can do better.

“I don’t think there is any secret. When you play again so quickly, you can’t dwell on it. It’s the same with a big win. If you win by three, four or five, you can’t be celebrating for days. You have another big game coming up. When you go through periods like this when you are playing so often, it’s impossible to dwell on any of them. It’s not beneficial for the next game. It’s still early in the season, of course, but you can’t afford to switch off. Every game is important and we need to keep producing results to get to where we want to be.

“I think we are an honest group and that is why we can move on quickly. We can have honest conversations about the game. Then we focus on the next one. It’s a good challenge on Sunday. All of the games we have had in this [run of seven games in three weeks] have been difficult and this one will be no different. I think this is the first time in this block we’ve had more than two or three days leading into a game, so it was a chance for us to get back on the training ground to work on some things. So come Sunday we will be ready.”