CAL: CELTS ARE COMEBACK KINGS

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 preseason in terms of the running and football fitness side. That’s great but I feel as well that it’s more the mental fitness in that we are just grinding teams down all the time.

“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.

“It’s just up to us to keep ticking on and trying to win.”

McGregor is five games shy of making a century appearances for Celtic and admits that will be a huge honour.

He told the Celtic View: “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.