McGregor: Celtic's focus is internal after cutting gap in title race

Celtic captain Callum McGregor has said it’s still too early to make predictions about the Premiership title after his side moved to within two points of Rangers at the top of the table.

A blistering start at Easter Road helped deliver a 3-1 win over Hibs on Wednesday night, at the same time as Rangers were drawing with Aberdeen at Ibrox and Hearts took a point from their match against St Johnstone.

That means Celtic are the first side to win four top flight games on the bounce this season, with McGregor believing that the side has taken great strides in recent weeks.

“I think we just continue to look at ourselves,” the Celtic skipper said. “Since we’ve come back from the international break we’ve been outstanding. Even second half tonight we showed another side to our game when we need to dig in and work for each other.

“You always have moments like that in games so as good as the first half was, the second half was equally as important for the group to know that we can really dig in and see the game out.

“We’ll just continue to keep working hard and getting better. The manager keeps putting those demands on us so I’m sure he’ll continue to do that.”

With manager Ange Postecoglou introducing his own style of play to the team, and after a summer that saw a large turnover of players, early inconsistencies had many suggesting that a transitional season lay ahead and title hopes had already taken a dent early in the season.

After climbing the table to close in on Rangers, McGregor said it was still too early for serious talk about who would be lifting the trophy. He said there was no focus on what happens at Ibrox, with Celtic just concentrating on their own game and finding where they could continue to develop.

“It’s still early doors,” he said. “We were probably on the receiving end of those questions a few weeks ago before the international break and you see how quickly it can turn. By no means do we start to look at the end game.

“It’s a quarter of the way through the season and there’s so much football to be played. The good thing about this team is that I still think there’s improvement in it as well. We’ll keep putting demands on each other to get better and better and I think you saw the fruits of that tonight.

“I think we just look at ourselves. We look at our fixtures and where we can get points and we approach every game to get maximum points and to keep getting better.

“This is a completely new team and we’re still finding out just how good we could be.

“We’re not looking elsewhere, we’re just looking within the building and trying to push each other every day. I spoke about the manager putting demands on us and that’s what he’s doing. I think you can see the players responding to that and responding to the challenge as well because there’s so many young ones in the team to develop.

“Once we get that right, who is to say how good we can be?”