Callum McGregor admits Celtic look ‘broken’ as captain issues rallying cry
Callum McGregor has urged Celtic to stick together and fight their way through a difficult period after another painful defeat against Ferencvaros.
Martin O’Neill’s side were beaten 3-1 at Celtic Park in their Europa League opener, just four days after suffering a 3-0 defeat to Rangers at Ibrox.
It leaves Celtic under early pressure in Europe and facing a difficult task to progress, with several challenging fixtures still to come in the league phase.
More immediately, O’Neill must find a response ahead of another Glasgow Derby on Sunday, with Rangers travelling to Celtic Park.
Speaking after the Ferencvaros defeat, McGregor admitted Celtic currently look short of confidence and acknowledged there are problems with how the team are trying to play.
Speaking to Connie McLaughlin of TNT Sports, McGregor said: “Yeah, tough. They scored at good times.
“Yeah, a sore one, but we have to stick together now.
“You can see that it’s a little bit broken in terms of how we want to play. It’s a little bit nervy, it’s a little bit awkward at times.
“But we have to fight our way through this. We have to stay together, everyone: we need the supporters with the players and the staff.
“Because the only way through it is hard work. Keep working, keep working and get a bit of luck.
“We’re actually pushing with 20 minutes to go. You can see everything’s hitting people, going out for throw-ins, everything.
“You just need a moment to drop for you and hopefully the thing will turn. But we have to keep working.”
Asked what exactly is going wrong for Celtic, the captain believes there are several issues but stressed the importance of keeping the squad united.
He continued: “There’s loads of different things, but the main thing now is we have to stick together.
“It is a tough period, really bad result at the weekend, bad result again tonight. So you can see how quickly it starts to come down on top of you.
“But we need the experienced ones, now, to stay together and pull the group together. It’s a relatively new group, so we have to learn.
“We have to get to the level as quickly as we possibly can, because you see that we don’t get much leeway.
“And the only way through that, like I said, is hard work, staying together and keep trying to do the basics.”
