Celtic's McGregor Calls for Team Unity After 3-0 Derby Defeat

Callum McGregor did not bother dressing it up. He looked at a 3-0 derby defeat and called out his own dressing room.

“I think the difference between the two sides was you’ve seen a team and then you’ve seen a team of individuals,” the Celtic captain said. Rangers, he insisted, looked like a unit. Celtic looked like a group of players doing their own thing, wanting the ball but not willing to run without it.

At this level, and in this fixture, that is a damning verdict.

You can’t defend with six players

McGregor’s anger was not aimed at one or two. It was aimed at the collective. He accused his side of being reluctant to run, a basic non‑negotiable in a game of this magnitude.

“That’s the one thing you can’t do when you come here is just don’t run. You can’t defend with six players, it’s impossible. We’re trying to get the message to everyone that we have to be a team.

“We have to be the team that we want to be. We need to find a way to do that quickly because we lost a big game in LASK. We lost another big game today and it’s not acceptable,” he said.

Celtic’s standards are built on winning big matches. McGregor knows it. The support knows it. Right now, that identity is fraying.

“If we want to be a good Celtic team then we have to win the big games. That’s one thing we’ve always done is win big games and turned up when it mattered. So far this season we’ve been bitty in games and we need to fix it,” he added.

The manager has already spoken about wake‑up calls after the Champions League collapse against LASK in Linz. This, by any measure, was another one.

“We’ve put ourselves under pressure,” McGregor admitted. “We need to respond on Thursday and we need to respond on Sunday.”

Two games. Two chances to show they have heard the alarm.

Effort non‑negotiable, reputations irrelevant

Celtic fans can tolerate off days. They will not tolerate a lack of effort. McGregor’s comments cut straight to that fear: that some in the squad are not doing the running required to wear the shirt.

If there are players not prepared to put in the work, the message from the stands will be ruthless – sit them in the stand.

McGregor did not spare the overall performance either. “We were poor in pretty much every area of the game,” he said. Once Celtic fell behind, they never truly looked like recovering.

“Once we went behind in the game we never looked like we were recovering really to be honest. We had a couple of good moments early on.

“If we take them it’s a different game. And we know that coming here you’re not going to get hundreds and hundreds of chances. You get moments in the game where if you take them it can totally change the outlook of the game. I felt like once we went one behind then we never really looked like getting back in it to be honest.”

One player did emerge with credit. McGregor acknowledged that Colby Donovan, likely the lowest‑paid player on the park, was an honourable exception in a team that fell well short of the required level.

The rest? Brutal truths, and no hiding place.

Damage limitation at 3-0

By the time the third Rangers goal went in, the contest was gone. Pride and damage limitation became the priority.

“You don’t want fours and fives for sure,” McGregor admitted. “As soon as the goal went in, then I’m saying to Cam and Scalesy, ‘Look, no more goals, we have to just tighten this up’.

“Of course, we always want to get back in the game. And we always want to be a team that, even at 3-0 down, you still want to have a chance, but you have to understand the circumstance you’re in as well. If it starts to run at fours and fives, then you’re talking about a different ballgame.”

For a Celtic captain to be talking like that at Ibrox tells its own story. The performance did not fool anyone. At this club, you deliver or you do not last. You cannot hide, you cannot coast, you cannot point fingers elsewhere.

On the day, only Donovan met that standard in McGregor’s eyes.

“You can see it, 100 per cent,” he said of the team’s disjointed nature. “You can see it, especially for the guys that have been here for a long time and the guys that have been watching Celtic for a long time.

“You see the team and how it functions and how it performs and how it behaves. And it’s just been too bitty. So we have to find a way to bring it back and bridge that gap and start to bring it together. Because if we don’t, then you’ll have more days like this.”

New faces, same demands

McGregor did acknowledge there are new players still adjusting, still learning what is demanded in this system and at this club. But patience has limits.

“There are some new guys in, trying to get them bedded in, trying to get them to understand the system, how we want the Celtic team to look,” he said. “There have been shades of it this season but not enough. So eventually the penny has to drop, we have to get there. Because you can’t just turn it on and off, it’s impossible.

“Especially when you come to venues like this. You have to be good against the ball and when you get it, you have to be the version of Celtic that we want to be. And we know it gets us success.”

That version has been missing too often. The captain spelled out what must happen next.

“It’s reinforcement, it’s training, it’s coaching, it’s all of these things,” he said. “The guys are given good information. We’ve been doing this a long time. You need to bring it together because it’s two big games that we’ve lost.

“And you probably won’t get many more before the pressure really ramps up. And we have to be honest about that, let’s not shy away from it. So we have to fix it.”

Two huge tests, zero margin

Fix it they must, and fast. A pivotal week looms: a major European tie on Thursday, then Rangers at Celtic Park on Sunday. Sixty thousand home supporters will file into the stadium fully aware of what happened at Ibrox and fully aware of what their captain has said about it.

They will not accept another outing where effort is in question. They rarely forgive that. They never forget it.

The message could not be clearer. Time to deliver, Bhoys – or face the consequences of a season that unravels before it has truly begun.