Celtic plan to stop Hearts title surge unveiled as Jambos discover how rivals are targeting busy schedule

Celtic captain Callum McGregor has called on his teammates to find more ‘consistency’ in order to pull through their rough patch of form and close the gap on Premiership leaders Hearts.

The 55-time and defending champions fell eight points behind Hearts with a 3-1 defeat in the clash between the two sides at Tynecastle on Sunday, which was their second consecutive league defeat and third match out of the last four without a win.

Any notions of Hearts now being favourites for the title are extremely premature, given the Old Firm’s 40-year stranglehold on Scottish football - not to mention the Jambos being without a title since 1960. However, they’ve put themselves in a great position at this early stage, and it’s now up to Celtic to claw themselves back into contention as they seek to overtake Rangers’ title haul for the first time since the 1920s.

Callum McGregor urges Celtic to find ‘consistency’ in Hearts pursuit

For McGregor, the most puzzling thing about Celtic’s league defeats to Dundee and Hearts is that they’ve come either side of an excellent 2-1 comeback win over Austrian champions Sturm Graz in the Europa League.

The Hoops captain insists he and his teammates are fully aware of the situation they’ve landed themselves in, acknowledging that it’s now time for them to convert that knowledge into ‘action on the pitch’.

“I think they understand the situation that we’re in, of course they do. But we have to turn that into action on the pitch,” McGregor told reporters after Sunday’s bruising defeat to Derek McInnes’ men.

“We saw it on Thursday night (against Sturm Graz), we were excellent. But we have to back it up three days later, and then another three days later, we’ve got to do the same.

“That’s where we are, we’re showing flashes, but not on a consistent enough basis.”

Celtic heading into busy schedule as Hearts focus solely on Premiership push

McGregor believes a lack of quality performances and a loss of confidence out on the pitch are combining to ‘feed a narrative’ of failure around Brendan Rodgers’ side right now.

The good news for Celtic is that they have plenty of opportunities to put things right, with a Premiership tie against Falkirk, a League Cup clash with Rangers and a Europa League trip to FC Midtjylland all to come within the next 10 days alone, before another important league fixture at home to Kilmarnock a week on Sunday.

For McGregor, the key is figuring out how Celtic looked so good against Sturm Graz, and bottling that up for use in the upcoming busy schedule.

“A little bit of everything at the minute. Confidence, quality, all of these things are feeding into the narrative of what’s happening at the minute,” McGregor continued.

“But when I see the team play on Thursday night, and the level they can reach, then it’s now about trying to reach that and understanding how we got there, to replicate it every three days, because at the minute, it’s too up and down. It’s too inconsistent.”

While Celtic have multiple competitions to balance, Hearts can focus purely on the league, where they travel to St. Mirren on Wednesday before hosting Dundee on Saturday.

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