Ange Postecoglou gives downbeat Callum McGregor injury update as Celtic boss slams ‘negative’ approach in Leipzig loss

Ange Postecoglou confirmed that Callum McGregor’s knee injury “doesn’t look good” after the Celtic captain limped off in the first-half against RB Leipzig in the Champions League.

The Scotland international was unable to continue after aggrevating his right knee in a 50/50 with Xavier Schlager en route to conceding the Germans opening goal in the 3-1 defeat in Germany.

McGregor attempted to run off the problem before eventually being forced off in the 37th minute and Postecoglou admits he’s fearing the worst after the 29-year-old was sent for a scan to determine how long he will be sidelined for.

Postecoglou told BT Sport: “It doesn’t look good. We were a bit unlucky with their first goal, when Callum had a shot and tweaked his knee.

“He put in an enormous effort to get back and his toe poke put the guy through. Looking at him, it doesn’t look good but I will wait and see what the doctor says.”

McGregor, who would have sat out of Saturday’s Premiership clash against St Johnstone, following his dismissal at home to Motherwell last weekend is now likely to join the growing list of casualties on the Hoops treatement table.

Postecoglou is already without favoured centre-half pairing Cameron Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt through injury and with a busy period of fixtures to contend with before the World Cup break, the Australian will hope to have a few players back over the coming weeks.

Commenting on his side’s defeat against RB Leipzig, which leaves them rooted to the bottom of Group F, Postecoglou stated: “At this level if you play for survival, that’s all you ever get - you never really get anywhere.

“It gives us an opportunity to get into a bit of a rhythm. Obviously we are a few people down tonight. We lost Cam and Carl being out, Liel (Abada) being out and we lost Aaron (Mooy) and David (Turnbull) today.

“Hopefully we are going to get some players back because we are going to need them. Hopefully we get some bodies back and we can maintain our levels of performance.”

It was another tought night in Europe for Celtic as they rode their luck with two Leipzig goals disallowed by VAR for offside decisions - but Postecoglou felt his side were too negative in their style of play after getting back on level terms.

He added: “It’s not about the mistake, it’s about before then. We had a lot of the ball and we were just passing it back to him (Joe Hart) for no reason. You are doing what you think is safe but it’s not really what we are.

“I just felt it was creeping in before that after we scored we wanted to settle for that and started passing the ball back. It is about what is the lead-up to the mistake, are we played our football? Are we showing the same sort of endeavour we were before then?

“I could see it coming, if it wasn’t Joe making the mistake tonight it would have been someone else.”