Celtic's Callum McGregor Calls for Team Unity After Defeat

Callum McGregor did not bother dressing it up.

“I think the difference between the two sides was you’ve seen a team and then you’ve seen a team of individuals,” the Celtic captain said, the words landing as heavily as any Rangers challenge. “Rangers were a team and you could see that. We looked like a team of individuals that wanted to do our own thing and play when we got the ball, not necessarily run when you don’t have the ball.”

At Ibrox, that accusation cuts deep. Celtic didn’t just lose. They were exposed.

McGregor’s anger was aimed squarely at the players on the park, at their reluctance to run, to graft, to do the ugly work that underpins any big away performance. The captain knows the financial reality too. Those same players, he pointed out, won’t hesitate to collect their hefty salaries at the end of the month. The least the club and the support should expect in return is maximum effort, especially in a fixture of this magnitude.

“That’s the one thing you can’t do when you come here is just don’t run,” he said. “You can’t defend with six players, it’s impossible. We’re trying to get the message to everyone that we have to be a team.

“We have to be the team that we want to be. We need to find a way to do that quickly because we lost a big game in LASK. We lost another big game today and it’s not acceptable.

“If we want to be a good Celtic team then we have to win the big games. That’s one thing we’ve always done is win big games and turned up when it mattered. So far this season we’ve been bitty in games and we need to fix it.”

The manager had called it a wake-up call. McGregor, though, knows this isn’t the first alarm that’s gone off. The Champions League collapse in Linz against LASK should have done that. It clearly didn’t.

“We’ve put ourselves under pressure,” he admitted. “We need to respond on Thursday and we need to respond on Sunday.”

Celtic fans can tolerate off days, bad luck, even the odd tactical misstep. What they will not forgive is a lack of effort. Any player unwilling to put the work in, in McGregor’s eyes and in the eyes of the support, should be nowhere near the pitch.

On a grim afternoon, he could find only one real positive on the park – and it came from one of the least heralded figures in the squad.

“We were poor in pretty much every area of the game,” he said. “Once we went behind in the game we never looked like we were recovering really to be honest. We had a couple of good moments early on.

“If we take them it’s a different game. And we know that coming here you’re not going to get hundreds and hundreds of chances. You get moments in the game where if you take them it can totally change the outlook of the game. I felt like once we went one behind then we never really looked like getting back in it to be honest.”

Colby Donovan, probably the lowest-paid player on the pitch, was the exception. He ran, he competed, he showed the attitude the fixture demands. On a day when senior players shrank, the youngster at least looked like he understood the jersey.

Once the third Rangers goal went in, the contest was gone. Pride, and damage limitation, became McGregor’s priority.

“You don’t want fours and fives for sure,” he admitted. “As soon as the goal went in, then I’m saying to Cam and Scalesy, ‘Look, no more goals, we have to just tighten this up’.

“Of course, we always want to get back in the game. And we always want to be a team that, even at 3-0 down, you still want to have a chance, but you have to understand the circumstance you’re in as well. If it starts to run at fours and fives, then you’re talking about a different ballgame.”

The captain knows the standards. At Celtic, you deliver or you don’t last. You can’t hide, you can’t coast, you can’t point the finger elsewhere. Perform as a unit and as individuals, or you’re out. On that score, only Donovan escaped with any real credit.

“You can see it, 100 per cent,” McGregor said. “You can see it, especially for the guys that have been here for a long time and the guys that have been watching Celtic for a long time.

“You see the team and how it functions and how it performs and how it behaves. And it’s just been too bitty. So we have to find a way to bring it back and bridge that gap and start to bring it together. Because if we don’t, then you’ll have more days like this.”

He has been around long enough to recognise the warning signs. This is not just an off afternoon. It is a pattern, and one that has to be broken quickly.

“There are some new guys in, trying to get them bedded in, trying to get them to understand the system, how we want the Celtic team to look,” he said. “There have been shades of it this season but not enough. So eventually the penny has to drop, we have to get there. Because you can’t just turn it on and off, it’s impossible.

“Especially when you come to venues like this. You have to be good against the ball and when you get it, you have to be the version of Celtic that we want to be. And we know it gets us success.”

So the work begins again. On the training ground. In meetings. In uncomfortable conversations.

“It’s reinforcement, it’s training, it’s coaching, it’s all of these things,” McGregor said. “The guys are given good information. We’ve been doing this a long time. You need to bring it together because it’s two big games that we’ve lost.

“And you probably won’t get many more before the pressure really ramps up. And we have to be honest about that, let’s not shy away from it. So we have to fix it.”

The clock is already ticking. Two huge fixtures loom this week, capped by Rangers coming to Celtic Park on Sunday. Sixty thousand home supporters will be there, fully aware of what unfolded at Ibrox and of their captain’s brutally honest verdict on it.

They can live with defeat. They will not live with players who don’t run.

Now it’s simple. Time to deliver, or be exposed again.