CALLUM McGregor last night insisted he had been completely unaffected by the furore over the late penalty which he won for Celtic in their Ladbrokes Premiership match against Motherwell last week.
McGregor was accused of diving when, with his team trailing 1-0 at Fir Park, he went to ground in the opposition area with three minutes of regulation time remaining on Wednesday evening.
Andy Rose, who challenged the midfielder, claimed his opponent had gone down deliberately and played for a spot kick which Scott Sinclair scored to extend his side’s unbeaten domestic run to 66 games.
However, the 24-year-old, who is hoping to line-up for Celtic in their massive Champions League group game with Anderlecht this evening, believes referee Willie Collum got the decision right.
“People want to talk about it, but the facts are there,” he said. “It was a penalty. We got the draw, and that’s it. From our point of view it was dealt with and it’s done.
“To be fair, you could see from the angle it was a penalty. They will feel they were hard done by because they put so much in to the game.
“They probably thought they should have won the game. At the same time, we could have been two or three up. Overall the draw was probably the fair result.
“Of course I always try to be honest, that’s the way I have been brought up. You could see from the reverse angle it was a penalty and the referee gave it. Simple as that.”
Asked if he had been hurt by the reaction to the high-profile incident, he said: “To be honest I’ve not read all the stuff about it. As far as I was concerned I was fouled and it was a penalty.
“If people want to question whether you are honest or not, then that’s down to them. But if you know the type of boy I am, then you’d know I don’t go down too easily. It’s one for them to make their own minds up.”
McGregor is confident he can put the controversy to the back of his mind by helping Celtic defeat Anderlecht in their final Group B match and booking a place in the last 32 of the Europa League next season.
He believes Rodgers’s side can achieve their objective – if they play their natural game and attack their opponents from the first whistle at Parkhead.
“We want to be continuing in European football after Christmas,” he said. “We’ve had tough games so far, Bayern Munich and PSG are great teams. This will be another tough one. We won the away game fairly comfortably, but we know they have picked up since them.
“They will be coming here looking to score the goals they need so we need to guard against that while trying to play our own game. It would be risky to sit back. We are at our best when we go out to win game by stamping our authority.
“If we were just to sit back and try to avoid losing three or four goals we would only make it difficult for ourselves. It would invite pressure, so we will be looking to take the game to them.
“The Europa League is the next step for us as a group.”
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