The Hoops skipper is gearing up for a grandstand finish to the Premiership season after their Ibrox fightback

Callum McGregor(Image: SNS Group)

Callum McGregor insists Celtic’s Ibrox salvage mission sent rivals a Premiership title warning – the Hoops are not going away.

The Parkhead skipper was thrilled with another Celts late, late show as his side snatched a point at the death in Govan on Sunday to remain in the battle at the top. Martin O’Neill’s men can jump ahead of Rangers on Wednesday and slash the gap to Hearts to five points if they win their game in hand at Aberdeen on Wednesday.

Celtic are hanging on to their trophy by three fingernails but McGregor insisted his side are up for the scrap with an incredible SIX crucial stoppage-time winners or levellers this season. He said: “Yeah, I think that’s been evident obviously over the last sort of four or five weeks with the late goals and everything else.

“Obviously we’d like to avoid putting ourselves in those positions, but the game’s never perfect and it shows the team are still fighting. We believe in where we want to get to and it’s that attitude that you never know when you’re beat. Obviously, we got the equaliser again, which on the face of it looks like a really good point.

“That’s what we want from the team. We spoke before the game as well and listen it was an interesting week coming ahead as well. Obviously we’ve spoken about that. Maybe the last four or five weeks it’s been quite evident.

“Football’s not easy. It never goes to plan a lot of the time as well. You can plan for things, but in the moments where you’re up against it, you need characters, you need personality to take the ball and play your way back into the game and probably none better a place to do it than Ibrox.

(Image: SNS Group)

“Big credit to the players because it’s not easy when you’re 2-0 down and you know the fans are going crazy. It shows everyone that you know we’re right in this, obviously with a game in hand which hopefully will nudge us closer as well and then we charge down these last sort of eight or nine games and see where we can get to.”

McGregor is demanding another performance at Pittodrie to turn up the heat on Hearts. And the captain insisted Sunday’s second half fightback against Rangers will have given Celts a psychological boost with the Old Firm rivals set to square up again on Sunday in the Scottish Cup.

He said: “We know Ibrox was rocking a few weeks ago when they beat Hearts and you could tell the club and everybody fancied it, so it was trying to get through that first 20 minutes and hopefully we could turn the atmosphere.

“Obviously what we’ve ended up doing in the end of the game is kind of nudged it towards our favour a little bit. So it can be difficult places to play these big clubs and we have to try and capitalise on that. We know we’ve got a Scottish Cup game to come at the end of the week and we want to try and feed into that as much as we can.

“Obviously we will have a full stand as well and it’s just little moments like that that can hopefully turn the momentum in your favour and that’s where we need to be as well, but the boys showed every bit of character that they’ve got in there and it was a really good point in the end.”

Celtic came back roaring at Ibrox but McGregor revealed boss O’Neill DIDN’T read the riot act at half-time.

He said: “He was just nice and calm. It’s easy to get carried away in this fixture and start shouting and screaming and what you need is calm heads. At half-time as well, you sort of find the problem, find the solution and then go from there. He was excellent.

“All the staff were really, really good, identified the solution to the game, gave us information and then the players took it on and played really well in the second half.”