MIDFIELDER Callum McGregor reckons Celtic’s relentless playing style is demoralising for the opposition. The Scot credits manager Brendan Rodgers’ intense fitness regime for the amount of late goals his side have scored this season, as well as for their ability to harry their opponents into submission whenever Celtic lose the ball.
He said: “The way we play, we want to circulate the ball and get teams moving. But if it breaks down then we try and hunt it back as quickly as we can. That can demoralise teams as they think, “here we go, we have to try to get it back again”. Our mindset is that as soon as we lose it we want to get it straight back and that just tires teams out.
“We keep going and keep being relentless and that’s when the fitness side of things comes into it. At the end of a game we still have the quality, the fitness and the mental sharpness to make the right decisions at the right time.
“I think this is the fittest I’ve felt as a player. We had a great pre-season in terms of the running and football fitness side. That’s great but I feel as well that it’s more the mental fitness also in that we are just grinding teams down all the time.
“We keep moving the ball and the other teams are getting more and more tired while we get sharper as the game goes on. So I think as much as the actual fitness itself it’s more to do with the mental fitness as well that we can keep going and get the goals.
“We’ve seen that in the last few games we’ve been scoring late goals and that comes from the fitness side of things as well, which we’re always working hard on. We can see teams tire and we can go on and score and make one or two more goals. You saw that the other weekend against St Johnstone. That was a good example of that and it’s just up to us to keep ticking on and trying to win.
“It’s great to be a part of this team spirit. There’s nothing better as a player if you go and play and win on a Saturday so all of the boys are enjoying it as we are working hard as a team and getting the success.”
McGregor is five games shy of making a century appearances for Celtic and admits that will be a huge honour when it happens. He told the Celtic View: “That would be massive. Obviously as a young player coming through if somebody said you were getting 10 minutes for the first team you’d be buzzing. But to go on and get 100 appearances after coming through the system since I was nine years old will be a massive achievement. Reaching that landmark is something that I will be really proud of.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here