GLASGOW: Joe Ledley has urged his Celtic team-mates to put the disappointment of their League Cup semi-final defeat to one side and focus on what else they can achieve this season.
The Hoops were humbled by St Mirren in Sunday’s semi-final at Hampden with Danny Lennon’s side winning 3-2 to book a place in March’s final against Hearts.
The defeat ended the Parkhead club’s hopes of a first domestic treble since Martin O’Neill achieved the feat in his first season in charge of the Parkhead side in 2001. But, having booked a place in the last 16 of the Champions League and with another Scottish Premier League title win looking likely, the Welsh midfielder knows there is still plenty for Celtic to look forward to.
“We’ve got the SPL, the Champions League and the other cup as well,” said Ledley, whose side take on Kilmarnock in the league today.
“We just need to concentrate on those, take it game by game and rebuild and go again.
“We’ve had a fantastic achievement already to get into the last 16 of the Champions League and hopefully we can get a fantastic result against Juventus and go from there.
“We know it’s going to be difficult but hopefully we can achieve it.”
Celtic manager Neil Lennon slated his players after the defeat to St Mirren and accused some of his players of acting like spoiled kids. But Ledley hopes to use the Hoops SPL match against Killie at Parkhead today to get back to winning ways.
“The manager told us he wasn’t happy with the performance and the individuals,” the Welsh international said.
“We expected that and we knew within ourselves he would be disappointed.
“We need to do better as a team. The treble was something we wanted to achieve and we can’t do that now.
“We now need to rebuild and we are lucky we have got a game on Wednesday and hopefully we can now go out there and perform better. We just need to pick ourselves up.”
Celtic will hope to welcome back keeper Fraser Forster following a neck injury that has kept him out of their previous three matches and James Forrest may feature after returning to training. AFP
