McGregor’s Comments Reveal The Depth Of Anger Inside Celtic About Ibrox’s Arrogance.

For months now – this whole season in fact – the Ibrox club has run its collective mouth off every chance that it gets, and this is tiresome enough that even Ange has had to step in and slap their manager down.

The Mooch is not alone here; their players have been doing pretty much the same, and they’ve been ramping it up this past week.

Callum McGregor spoke to the press yesterday, and within his comments I detect just the right note of annoyance and frustration and the desire to rub their noses in our dominance a wee bit.

Since the new chairman over there is fond of the phrase, a chance to “settle some scores.” Callum was more diplomatic than that … but the message was pretty clear.

“A game at home against a big opponent, we want to go and send a message, of course we do,” he said. “We want to prepare well all week and when we turn up, we have to perform, we have to be hungry. If we do all these things … if that all works to plan, we’ve done our job properly … let’s not kid ourselves, they would be the same if the shoe was on the other foot, that’s the nature of competitive sport: you want to be the winner and you want to be dominant.”

Callum is at the very heart of the most exciting Celtic team many of us have watched in our lives, and this team has had to put up with constant disrespect from across the city and some sections of the press.

Our focus and drive is unbelievable.

We play under the twin pressures of our long unbeaten run and that of maintaining our lead.

We do both brilliantly, and the reason we’re able to is that we can switch ourselves off from all the outside noise and just concentrate on one game at a time.

But the next game is against them, and that’s an opportunity to remind them why we’re top.

As I’ve said before here, we don’t need the extra motivation. Callum talks about how hungry this team is for glory, and he’s right to. But that’s not to say that there won’t be an extra edge to our play because we want to send that clear message.

I hope the rest of the dressing room feels the way Callum does.

I hope there is a fierce burning desire to shut this lot up and show them why we’re champions.

Listening to the captain yesterday, reminding me so much of Brown, I believe there is.