GORDON STRACHAN today admitted it is crisis time for him and his Celtic players.
GORDON STRACHAN today admitted it is crisis time for him and his Celtic players.
The holders crashed out the Scottish Cup at Parkhead last night, losing 1-0 to Aberdeen.
For the first time ever, Celtic have been knocked out at home in both domestic cups in the same season. In the CIS Insurance Cup they lost at home to Hearts, and last night was only the fourth time in 50 years they have lost at home in the Scottish Cup.
Having survived several such crunch moments in his career as a player and a manager, Strachan is ready to meet this one head on.
They trail Rangers by three points in the championship with a game more played, but he remains confident his side have what it takes to defend the one remaining trophy available to them.
Strachan made no attempt to underplay the situation after the calamitous defeat by the Dons.
Just one goal in four games - the injury-time equaliser in the cup at Aberdeen - is squeezing the life out of Celtic's season, and Strachan was pulling no punches.
"This is the crunch time now," he admitted. "There was a crisis when I first came here, when there was a changeover and all the rest of the stuff. We handled that and won the league. Then we retained it, which was another crisis.
"Here's a crisis now because we need to win again. It's how we handle it as a club, manager, coaches and players. We'll have a good look at ourselves. And we have to do that as we're all in this crisis together.
"But it's nothing new. You get a crisis when you're in a reserve team as a boy at Dundee and you've got to be big enough and strong enough to get into the first team.
"Then you get bumped out of Manchester United.
"There are so many crises you come across in your life and you have to deal with them.
"You go to Coventry, and you're second bottom. Can you deal with that? Yes, we got out of that crisis.
"You go to Southampton, and they are second bottom. Can you deal with it? Yes, we have done that as a group. Now here's another one."
Strachan cancelled the squad's days off planned for today and tomorrow so he can spell out to his players how important it is to stick together to ride out this storm.
He said: "We always have to understand that if one or two of us are not at our best, people have to take it on their shoulders a bit more."
Sunday's SPL game against Gretna suddenly is a potential banana skin. "It's going to be that way all the time now," he said.
"We've put ourselves under more pressure because of last night. It's not media, it's not anything else. It's expectation from our fans and from ourselves and the fans are the ones whose expectations you have to make sure you live up to."
