Callum McGregor has urged Ange Postecoglou’s special guys to keep making sacrifices and write their own piece of Celtic history.
The Parkhead captain is pushing his troops and pressing home the need to stay relentless in the campaign home straight. With a Viaplay Cup in the bag, Celtic need just three points from their last five games starting against Hearts on Sunday to guarantee the Premiership title. Postecoglou’s side also have a Scottish Cup Final date next month against Inverness Caley Thistle and have a chance to win a staggering fifth club Treble since 2017.
McGregor has been involved in each of the last four having earned his first as part of Brendan Rogers’ Invincibles. Ironically, that squad cliched their title at Tynecastle with Scott Sinclair’s hat-trick the highlight of a resounding 5-0 success. That was a special team in a special season and, asked if he feels something similar is building under Postecoglou, McGregor said: “There are aspects of that. Just the way it feels.
“Sometimes you get a feeling as a player that you have special guys in there with you. And these things only happen when you have special people around you, giving everything to the cause.”
McGregor and James Forrest are the only survivors from 2017 and the skipper said: “This a new group and we have spoken about this a lot. We want to write our own history as a group of players, along with the management team.
“We have four or five weeks that can be really exciting and if we apply ourselves properly and make the right sacrifices then we’re hoping to get as many rewards as we can. So it’s a case of back to work and our full focus will be on getting a positive result at the weekend and obviously wrapping up the league.”
Immediately after defeating Rangers at Hampden in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup to book the clash against the Highlanders on June 3, focus switched instantly to that next mission at Tynecastle.
McGregor said: “That’s it. That’s what this club requires. Its relentless nature is to win and then you have to go and win again. Of course you enjoy the big days. The supporters would have enjoyed Hampden, I’m sure of that. But there is still a lot of work to be done. There are four or five really exciting weeks of the season left, but it only becomes exciting if you do the hard work and you put in the performances when the big games come.”
Despite having won four of them, McGregor insists any chance to complete a domestic clean sweep remains a special target to aim for and achieve. He said: “Of course. If you manage to do it, it’s a combination of being almost perfect in the big games. You know how difficult that is throughout the season.
“You’ve seen a lot of good teams not do it, so our focus is just to take each day as it comes. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then. But we should take a lot of confidence from last Sunday and another big game when we’ve managed to get the job done.”
McGregor is leading the charge and admits he’s getting extra buzz from having the chance to repeat past feats and winning the biggest games such as last weekend’ encounter at the National Stadium. He said: “Even more so. When you’re younger, you think these things are normal and that it might happen every year. You just expect that all the time.
“But as you get older you appreciate how hard it is, how much work goes in and how much sacrifice goes in. “You know you have to turn up on the big days. There is a lot of energy that goes into things behind the scenes to do these things as well. So I think you just enjoy it more when you get older and have success. You enjoy it that wee bit more.”
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