Callum McGregor takes encouragement from Celtic's Champions League performances

Celtic captain Callum McGregor insists the side shouldn’t be too disheartened by their two Champions League group results so far, saying the underlying performances give hope they can deliver results.

The Scottish champions suffered heartache on Wednesday when Lazio scored a last-gasp winner to secure a 2-1 win at Celtic Park. With the team having lost their opener away to Feyenoord, it leaves them at the bottom of the group ahead of back-to-back games against Atletico Madrid.

While McGregor didn’t complain about either result, he believes that Celtic were competitive in both games and have shown that they weren’t completely outclassed.

Citing the moment when Luis Palma thought he had put Celtic ahead against Lazio, only for a faint touch from Daizen Maeda to have made him offside, McGregor made the case that there are fine margins involved and it wouldn’t take a huge change to see his side gain positive results.

“I think the performances have been really controlled, there’s been controlled aggression in terms of the way we’re playing,” he said. “We’re creating really good moments in the game.

“There’s nothing in this group that should scare us in terms of performance level. We’ve been really good in large spells of both games. So again, it’s taking that learning, finding that moment or that little bit of luck.

“With the VAR stuff, the Daizen touch is enough to play him offside and it’s wee things like that, obviously at the highest level, they get picked up and maybe they don’t elsewhere.

“It’s just maybe about that little moment where something falls for us and we get points on the board. And then the belief really grows from there.

“But we’ve played two of the teams in this group and for large spells of the game we’ve been massively in it.”