CALLUM McGregor has revealed he will ignore any outside noise in the build-up to the Rangers game on Sunday and concentrate fully on helping Celtic perform at their very best.
Ibrox manager Philippe Clement has stated that his side will be going “flat out” to beat their city rivals in the William Hill Premiership fixture at Parkhead this Sunday and will not “park the bus”.
Clement, whose charges drew one and lost four of the matches they played against Brendan Rodgers’ men last season, also insisted that his men had been “really close” in a couple of their meetings with the Scottish champions.
The Belgian was speaking after watching Rangers romp to an emphatic 6-0 triumph over Ross County in the league at Hampden on Saturday to briefly move to the top of the table.
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Celtic captain McGregor, who was outstanding in the matches against the Govan outfit during the 2023/24 campaign, appreciates the defending Scottish champions will have to play well to stretch their unbeaten run in meaningful derby matches to 12 on Sunday.
However, the former Scotland midfielder stressed that he will not be paying attention to external comments during the build-up and will not feel the need to use to use inflammatory remarks to fire his team mates up.
“If you can match it with a strong performance, then of course that would be the ideal world for everyone. But we know it's never as easy as that. Rangers are a good side and obviously had a really good result yesterday.
“So we know it will be tough game. We have to give everything that we've got in the tank for the game, and hopefully we can have a positive afternoon."
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McGregor continued: "I don’t have to do anything really, to be honest. Everyone knows how big the games are and when they come around, you probably don't need any added motivation for it.
"But for us, we have a structure and a system and the way that we want to train first and foremost. We try and get the most amount out of the players as possible. If that becomes a daily habit, then when you arrive in the big moments, then it should be second nature for you.
"You have to have a little bit of emotion and emotion is good in football. But a lot of the time it's a case of, ‘Here's the structure, if we do this a lot of the time, then the probability is we'll have a good day’.
"So it's as much about trying to keep the players calm. Obviously, when we arrive to the game then, like I spoke about there, the emotion is important, because you need that, especially in these types of fixtures. But for most of the week, it's just business as usual."
