Luke McCowan urges Celtic to show character in Premier Sports Cup final

Luke McCowan says Celtic need to show their character in Sunday’s Premier Sports Cup final against St Mirren at Hampden Park.

Wilfried Nancy became the first Hoops manager to lose his opening two matches when Italian giants Roma won 3-0 at Parkhead in the Europa League on Thursday night, which followed on from a 2-1 home defeat to leaders Hearts in the Premiership last weekend.

Celtic fans, some of whom booed at the end of the defeat by Roma, are approaching the final against the Buddies with more nerves than they would have done before the Frenchman took over from interim bosses Martin O’Neill and Shaun Maloney, who in turn had taken over from Brendan Rodgers.

McCowan, the 28-year-old midfielder, who joined from Dundee in August 2024, called for unity and a demonstration of the traits that have made the Parkhead club so successful in recent times.

He said: “I can’t really talk for the fans, but we are fully bought-in. We need to buy-in, it’s kind of non-negotiable.

“We need to back everyone in this building, regardless of who’s been playing well, who’s not.

“We are a team and we need to back each other through the good and the bad because everybody’s all high-fives and cuddles when we are winning but this team doesn’t go through two or three bad results and this is where the true characters are shown.

“So we need just to be together and I know I’ve said so many times, stick together

“It’s when you go through bad spells – personally I’ve done it with Dundee and Ayr – then we just need to kind of have that same attitude of work hard, move on to the next game.

“The games are coming thick and fast in this period and it’s a good thing that if you get one win it can propel you to get a few hopefully and we just need to start with that on Sunday.

“We just need to get on top of it again.”