Celtic midfielder Ryan Christie has said that the players will use the disappointment of the defeat to Rangers ahead of the winter break as a wake up call and ensure it helps us to ‘kick on’ in the second half of the campaign when the fixtures return.
Losing out 1-0 as Rangers finally got the upper hand, Celtic were poor as manager Brendan Rodgers conceded following the game, and what could go wrong on the day largely did for us – but we still have the advantage in the Premiership title race and speaking to Sky Sports from our warm weather training camp in Dubai, Christie said the side simply had to use it as a motivation for the remainder of the campaign.
“We need to learn from it, we need to make it a learning curve, and I think it’s definitely helped give everybody the determination to really kick on again after the break. I think by now the game has really gone out of our heads and everyone’s looking forward to the games coming thick and fast again.”
With the league being a tight battle, there’s certainly good competition at the top and Christie knows that in itself means we can’t rest on our laurels and we have to show that we deserve to lift it again, although he did refute suggestions that we’d become complacent this year.
“I certainly don’t think we’ve stagnated. Like I said, I do think the quality and the rest of the teams have really stepped up this year. It has been a frustrating start and hopefully it’s something we can put right towards the end of the season. That’s when picking up the wins matters so hopefully from now until the end of the season we can put a real run of form together and pick up a lot of three points.”
With Rodgers making moves in the January window to strengthen us up top with the captures so far of Oliver Burke and Timothy Weah, at least we should be better placed now to pick up our form and find some greater consistency.