Cameron Carter-Vickers keeps things Celtic focused after being bombarded with questions about Rangers

By John McGinley

February 17, 2023

Cameron Carter-Vickers was on media duties for Celtic today ahead of this weekend’s Scottish Premiership clash against Aberdeen.

He covered a variety of subjects but a consistent theme coming up from those in attendance seemed to be Rangers.

The big defender was a for his thoughts on the points gap to the Ibrox club and multiple questions about the upcoming final at Hampden, as well as if he takes any notice of comments made by people such as Michael Beale.

Cameron Carter-Vickers isn’t interested in outside noise

The 25-year-old, who was a stand-in captain for Callum McGregor earlier this season, dealt with it well and made it crystal clear that the Celtic squad’s entire focus is on their own jobs.

On the points gap question and the title run-in, he said [Celtic YouTube]: “We just focus on our performance and as well as we can. From our point of view, nine points isn’t a big gap and it can change quickly. We’re fully aware of that and we have to keep performing well and winning games to see where it takes us.

“The manager here, he’s very good at getting the group to focus on the next game and the performance we want to put in, trying to improve every game we go into. The message before every game is to make this the best individual and team performance you’ve ever played. That’s largely what we’re focused on.”

On the upcoming cup final, Carter-Vickers stated: “You’ve got to take each game at a time. For us, it’s about firstly doing the job tomorrow and putting in a top performance and then after that, we can look forward to a big day.

“To be honest, no one around here has spoken too much about the cup final yet. We’re fully aware we’ve got to go out and perform tomorrow. If anything does change in terms of injuries and stuff like that, we have the squad where players can come in.”

And when asked if he pays any attention to media comments from other managers such as Beale, the USA international said: “Not really. I can only speak for me personally but I’m not one who’s too big on watching stuff like that. It’s just not really on my radar to be honest with you. I’m just focused on coming in here, training, going home and enjoying my life. Me personally, I’m not really aware of much of that.”

Celtic have everything in their own hands

These are the kind of comments you want to hear coming from the Celtic squad. We don’t need them to bite on anything said in the media or make big statements that could be blown out of proportion.

Celtic’s destiny this season is entirely in their own hands. We’re leading the chase in the league and will be favourites to win the cup competitions, too.

But that only comes with a laser focus on the right things, avoiding all of the external factors that could lead to complacency. This team do their talking on the pitch.

In other news, Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou brilliantly sidesteps media circus surrounding Beale and Martindale.