CALLUM McGREGOR believes it could be feisty at Fir Park tomorrow night when Celtic and Motherwell go head to head for the second of their three successive confrontations.
The Hoops got off to a winning start with their 2-0 Betfred League Cup Final success with Well raging at referee Craig Paterson’s penalty-kick decision following Cedric Kipre’s tug on Scotty Sinclair.
Moussa Dembele, who recovered from reckless over-the-ball lunge from his fellow-Frenchman early in the game, rolled in the award to add to James Forrest’s superb opener and the contest was effectively over.
Kipre saw red and there was no way back for the 10-man Lanarkshire outfit.
McGregor now expects a backlash in the Premiership meeting. The midfielder said: “It will be hard at Fir Park. For large parts at Hampden, they gave us a tough time and I know they felt a bit hard done by at the penalty decision.
“I thought it was the right call – there was a definite tug on Scott – but I am sure that they’ll want to have something to say about it tomorrow night.
“It wasn’t a munching tackle or anything like that, but, to be fair, there was contact. It was one v one and there was contact so by the letter of the law it was a penalty.
“You want to go through and put the ball in the back of the net, but if you feel that there has been contact then it does impede you.
“We know from experience that Fir Park is always a hard place to go.
“But we have had to dig out games and that comes from teams being desperate to beat us.
“We have stretched the unbeaten record now to 65 games and everyone wants to be the team that ends it.
“They give it that wee bit extra against us and we know that we have to lift it at times.”
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— Celtic Football Club (@celticfc) November 27, 2017
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