Taylor raring to go as Celtic enter 'business end of the season'

Celtic defender Greg Taylor says he’s ready to make a contribution as the team start “the business end of the season”.

Ange Postecoglou’s side have been back in training after the early winter break and are in action on Monday when they face Hibs in the first game of the Premiership re-start.

Taylor says he’s benefited from “a mini pre-season” and is keen to get going again. As well as attempting to overtake Rangers in the title race, the team want to add the Scottish Cup to their League Cup success, and progress in the Europa Conference League.

“This is the business end, you could say,” he said. “The next four or five months is where you get handed the silverware, apart from the one that we just won.

“This is now the business end so we need to do our talking on the pitch.”

Reflecting on the first half of the season, when Postecoglou rebuilt the squad and the team had to gel quickly, Taylor admitted it had been intense.

“I think it was a testing period to start with, and we had a lot of change,” he said.

“It’s been enjoyable.

“We’ve grown as a squad, grown as a team and a collective and all of us have tried as hard as we can to improve. We’ll continue to do that in the next few months.

“I don’t think we looked too far ahead to put timescales on [progress]. Thankfully, we’ve picked up the manager’s ideas and that’s probably down to him.

“He’s been very clear and concise on how he wants us to play, so we’ve had no reason to not understand our roles and thankfully we’ve all managed to do that.”

The squad changes in the January window have been nothing like the summer turnover but with Daezen Maeda, Reo Hatate and Yosuke Ideguchi joining from Japan there are new faces on the training ground and Taylor said he thinks they will make a valuable contribution.

“They’ve all settled in really well,” he said. “It’s good addition to the squad and can hopefully help us improve in the next few months.

“They’ve all got a fantastic work ethic but that’s something I think all of our signings have had this year, and it’s been beneficial.

“The more of that work ethic and quality is only going to improve us.”