Celtic's Callum McGregor Calls for Team Effort After Rangers Defeat

Callum McGregor did not bother with sugar-coating.

“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 in the aftermath of a bruising defeat to Rangers. One side worked, hunted, and moved as a unit. The other, by his own admission, played for themselves.

Rangers looked like a team. Celtic, he said, 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.”

For a Celtic captain to say that publicly tells its own story.

You can’t defend with six players

McGregor’s criticism cut straight to effort, not tactics. He accused the collective on the park of being reluctant to run, a damning charge at any time, but unforgivable in a derby of this magnitude.

“They’ll not be reluctant to collect their hefty salaries every month,” was the stinging verdict in the stands and beyond. The very least expected is maximum effort, especially in a game that matters so much to the club and to the support who ultimately fund those wages.

“That’s the one thing you can’t do when you come here is just don’t run,” McGregor 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.”

This is not a one-off warning. The captain knows the pattern: a Champions League collapse in Linz against LASK, now a derby defeat that felt every bit as alarming.

“If we want to be a good Celtic team then we have to win the big games,” he said. “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 this result and performance a wake-up call. McGregor’s tone suggested the alarm has been ringing for a while.

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

Donovan the exception on a grim afternoon

Celtic fans can tolerate mistakes. They can live with off days. What they will not forgive is a lack of effort. If players are not prepared to run, the view from the stands is simple: sit them in the stand.

McGregor accepted that Celtic were poor “in pretty much every area of the game”. One notable exception emerged: Colby Donovan, probably the lowest-paid player on the pitch, but the only one who emerged with genuine credit.

“We were poor in pretty much every area of the game,” McGregor 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.”

The blunt translation? Once Celtic conceded, they never truly believed they would turn it around. The team, in effect, chucked it.

From damage to damage limitation

When the third goal went in, the contest was over. The priority shifted from rescue mission to damage limitation.

“You don’t want fours and fives for sure,” McGregor 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.”

At Celtic, that “different ballgame” is not just about the scoreline. It is about trust. About credibility. About whether this group can be relied upon when the pressure bites.

“The players aren’t kidding anyone on with a performance like that,” was the unspoken verdict. At this club, you deliver or you don’t last. You cannot hide, you cannot coast, you cannot point fingers elsewhere. You deliver as a team and as individuals. On that second count, only Donovan emerged with any praise.

“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.”

New faces, old standards

McGregor did not ignore the context. There are new signings, new relationships, new demands. But his message was clear: that cannot become an excuse.

“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.”

That version of Celtic is currently missing in action.

“It’s reinforcement, it’s training, it’s coaching, it’s all of these things,” McGregor added. “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.”

Two huge games, zero margin

Fix it they must, and quickly. Celtic now walk into a pivotal week: a European test on Thursday, then Rangers at Celtic Park on Sunday. Sixty thousand Celtic supporters will be inside the stadium, fully aware of what unfolded at Ibrox and fully aware of their captain’s brutally honest assessment.

They will not accept a repeat. They may accept flaws in quality. They will not accept a refusal to run.

The message from the armband could not be clearer. Time to deliver, Bhoys.