Everything Celtic captain Callum McGregor said to the media, following his side's 3-1 win over St Johnstone this afternoon in Perth...

Can you talk us through your goal, how sweet was that strike?

I knew I was going to hit it on the half-volley as soon as it dropped. It’s one of those you have to shoot. I caught it clean and knew as soon as I hit it it had a chance. It was a good strike and I was glad to see it going in.

Are you aware that this is your first goal since May?

Yeah? It’s a defensive midfield role and there are not as many opportunities to join in the goals. But it’s always nice to get one.

In the context of the game it was an important goal, wasn't it?

I thought the second half we looked much more like ourselves in terms of the intent and aggression we played with. We started the half well and the goal was coming but we needed something like that or a bit of luck. You see the fans get a lift and the players get a lift and performance levels go up another notch. Two other brilliant finishes from Matt and James take the game away.

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Are you also aware that you have scored more goals against Saints (six) than any other top-flight team?

That’s a nice stat but the most important thing is the team wins.

Brendan Rodgers told us that was the angriest he has ever been at half-time. Was it fair?

It was definitely fair what he said. The first-half performance was nowhere near good enough to be a Celtic team. These places are difficult to come. If you don’t start the game well it gives them momentum. You could see after 25 minutes they got a couple of presses on and their tails went up. They get the goal and it makes the game even harder. Credit to them. But we were miles short in the first half. The gaffer was spot-on in terms of what he said. He was looking for a reaction and the pleasing thing was we rectified it and won the game. It’s important we keep winning.

The manager also mentioned the 'bullied' word - how did the players react to that?

You never want to be soft. That’s the one thing when you’re a good football team and people try to look for areas to exploit then the last thing as a professional footballer you want to be called is soft. That hurts the group. We can’t have too many moments like that because you’ll see teams will try to play on it. We’ve got to be better and stronger in those moments especially when we are defending the box.

Does that sting when you hear words like that?

Yes, it will. As a professional, you never want to be called soft. That will sit with the players in three, four, five days’ time because nobody likes to get a sore one off the manager. We have to take it on the chin and we deserved it. But we don’t want to be doom and gloom. We rectified it and when you’re a team that sets high standards and drop below it then it’s the manager’s job to tell you then the players' job is to fix it.

READ MORE: 'Some players were too comfortable' - Rodgers fires Celtic warning

What about displaying that captain’s performance?

We spoke in the changing room before we went out that we’d got ourselves in that mess so we have to get ourselves out of it again. We knew we had 45 or 50 minutes to rectify it because we didn’t want to drop points and everyone knew that. So it was a case of trying to start well in the second half and then the game plays out the way it did. The intent was there to get ourselves out of trouble. It could turn out to be a big half for us. We have all been in football for a long time now and you are never going to play well all the time. You have to accept that. But what you can’t accept is probably the level of performance in the first half, we can’t accept that. In this period we have so many games you’ve got to keep winning. It doesn’t matter how you’ve got to keep winning. Hopefully, when we get to the end of the season we look back on this 45 minutes as an important one. We had the strength of character to go out and rectify it. Every game is important, every half of football is important and we have to stay in that mindset.

What did you make of Scotland's draw for the Euros??

It was great watching the draw. We have three really good teams and it’s a strong group. When you get to a tournament that’s what you want to do, you want to be against the best teams and that’s what we’ll do in the opening game against Germany. It doesn’t come much bigger than that as an occasion and everyone is looking forward to it. I don’t remember the 1998 game as such but I have heard people talking about it. It’s going to be such a brilliant occasion opening the whole tournament.