Charlie Mulgrew admits Dundee United didn’t come close to matching Celtic as they crashed to a 3-0 Tannadice defeat on Sunday.
The defender was left disappointed as United failed to recapture the form that helped them to a 1-1 draw against his old club earlier in the season.
And while he heaped praise on the quality Celtic showed as they swept their hosts aside, Mulgrew admits United have to recover quickly from the loss.
“Celtic played very well but we’re still disappointed,” said Mulgrew. “We feel there’s a lot we could’ve done better.
“We came up against a class side but we’ve got to look at ourselves and it’s about what we do.
OUT OF NOWHERE! 🤯
A brilliant solo effort from Tom Rogic puts Celtic in the lead against Dundee United 🙌🟢
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— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) December 5, 2021
“I didn’t expect it to be that one-sided.
“But that can happen against Celtic. They are a good team.
“We probably didn’t get close enough to them but it’s hard.
“It’s easy to say we didn’t get close enough but there’s a lot of spaces and a lot of good movement.
“That’s not by accident so fair play to their manager and his team because they played some right good stuff.
“They took positions all the time. When they had the ball one pops out of position and another pops in. It’s not easy to deal with.
“Maybe if you get them on an off day then you can get close to them.
“But we didn’t this time and we’re gutted about that. We have to move on quickly.”
Charlie Mulgrew: We all know we need to do better
United have won just one out of their last seven games – a 1-0 victory over Aberdeen.
Their current ‘tricky period’ comes after they started the season on fire.
United are now clinging onto fourth place by virtue of one goal.
And Mulgrew believes his team-mates should ignore the stats and focus on performances.
“You can’t just accept things,” he added. “There are things we need to work on. We know what the problems are and we need to do better with them.
“But at the same time, overall, we’ve done well. We need to go again and pick up results and not rest on our laurels.”
“You can dress the stats up however you like. Take it to 12 games and it looks better for us or you can look at three games and it’s worse.
“You can look at stats however you like and we don’t look into them too much.
“We all know we need to do better. It’s as simple as that – start performing better and picking up wins.”
