Players all hungry to do well – Mcgregor

Celtic captain Callum Mcgregor said the team were determined right from the start of the season, even when results initially were inconsistent, as they targeted the title.

The Scotland midfielder said: “You always have to go through difficult moments, especially when you are building a team.

“Everyone at the start of the season was giving us two or three years to build a team but I spoke right at the start and said if we had that mentality within the group we would never achieve anything.

“This club demands success and the reality is that after six weeks we were under pressure.

“That tells you what the expectation is and we knew that exactly. The pleasing thing is you could see everybody was hungry to do well and then we just had to fine tune it, build performances and togetherness .

“I saw early on that we had recruited winners, guys who wanted to do well and others who experienced last year and didn’t want it again.

“That drove the standards and everything we do in training and what you saw out there on Saturday was the end product of all that hard work and sacrifice.”

Mcgregor, inset, added that losing the title to Rangers last season had hit him hard. He said: “When you are a winner and it is taken away from you, it hurts you.

“You take it personally. It’s a long summer and you can’t wait to put it right. “There’s no guarantees but you do everything in your power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“You can’t do it on your own. You have to build a team and squad with the same mentality and these boys have got it.

“The challenge now is it’s easy to chase and be desperate to get something but the hard part is to retain it.”