Skipper admits long, painful summer gave
Callum Mcgregor lifted the Premiership
trophy for the first time as Celtic captain and then revealed the hurt that fuelled his team-mates title success.
Mcgregor was among the players who endured the miserable and trophy-less season 2021.
He heard some people saying it would take two or three years to get back on track but was adamant that would not be acceptable.
The squad reported for pre-season training under Ange Postecoglou and vowed there would be no repeat of their failure.
He said: “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 that if we had that mentality within the group we would never achieve anything.
“I saw early on that we had recruited winners, guys who wanted to do well and others who experienced the previous year and didn’t want it again.
“That drove the standards and everything we do in training and what you see now is the end product of all that hard work and sacrifice.
“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.
“The pleasing thing is you could see everybody was hungry to do well and then we just had to fine tune it.
“When you are a winner and it is taken away from you, it hurts. You take it personally.
“It’s a long summer and you can’t wait to put it right.
“It’s easy to chase and be desperate to get something but the hard part is to retain it.
“We need to get better individually and collectively, there’s loads of rooms for improvement.
“The only way you do that is coming back with a fresh hunger to be successful again.”
Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou, who thanked the fans for embracing him, his family (and his jumper!) allowed himself a little look forward to leading his team into a Champions League night under the floodlights.
He said: “When the draw comes out it will become real. It is going to be special.
“Everyone talks to me about Champions League nights here at Celtic Park and there is nothing like it.
“It will be brilliant.”
Even someone of Postecoglou’s experience was moved by seeing how much the success meant to everyone at Celtic.
He said: “We’ve worked so hard and we had a real narrow focus about what we were trying to achieve this year.
“It’s great when you have that tunnel vision and finally get there.
“We won it last Wednesday night but the players and staff didn’t feel like the job was done.
“We wanted to finish it off in the right way.
“Every week I challenge them. I say to them: “Let’s make today our best game of the year’.
“It doesn’t always happen but you go in with that intent.
“It was the same this time. The players are human beings, not robots.
“When I think about how this group produced a performance like that, when to all intents and purposes, they didn’t have to, it makes me very proud.
“I look around and see the joy it brings people, the players, the fans, people who work for this club.
“I take enormous pride out of that.” The manager will now take a short summer break before fine-tuning preparations for next season.
He said: “I have a family and I have to stop for them.
“I want them to enjoy this moment, too. They don’t want me getting up tomorrow morning and start planning for next year.
“I need to spend a bit of time with them. We will go away and have a break. I’ll recharge the batteries.
“The reality is that we’ve already started planning for next year and my responsibility is to make sure that on day one we’re ready to go again.”