Christie and his team mates, who had been bidding to make Scottish football history in the 2020/21 campaign by completing 10-In-A-Row, were held to a 0-0 draw by Dundee United at Tannadice yesterday. 

The result meant their Ibrox rivals, who are 20 points clear with six games remaining, were crowned Premiership champions without kicking a ball.

However, the Scotland playmaker is now determined to put the disappointment behind him by helping Celtic to win the Scottish Cup and then reclaim the league next term. 

“Every player, not just me, at the club right now is hurting and wants to put things right,” he said. “Everybody has that champion’s mentality. That’s how we got to the position we have over the last four or five years. 

“Everyone is desperate to have that feeling back again, so everyone has that hunger again. We went to put things right and come back. 

“For me personally I’m not trying to be selfish. I’m just trying to go into every game and give my all. I’m trying to end the season as well as I possibly can. We have a cup to play for as well, so everybody is desperate to put on their best performance and win that.” 

Christie added: “It’s obviously not how we wanted the season to go. We started the season looking to defend our title and we’re all gutted. But we can only look forward now. For us, we don’t see it as it being over, it’s just a blip and we want to come back even stronger and go again.

“I probably wouldn’t say it (the gap between Celtic and Rangers) is a fair reflection, although obviously I’m a bit biased.  It probably just comes down to the amount of games where we have dominated and maybe not scored. And then we concede cheap goals at the other end and it comes down to fine margins. 

“It’s obviously frustrating at this part of the season for there to be such a big points gap. There were a lot of places where we could have picked up more points. 

“John K (interim manager Kennedy) touched on that and is trying to get that mindset back. That’s what champions do. When you face a blip you face a blip. You bounce back from it and try to get back on top again. That’s the mentality we need, no doubt about that. Everyone is ready to bounce back.”

Christie admitted he is pleased that Celtic take on Rangers at Parkhead in their next game on Sunday week and still have the Scottish Cup, which they are bidding to win for a record fifth consecutive occasion, to play for.  

He said: “I’ll just try to keep my own performances as high as they can be, try and create and score goals which is one of my main jobs in the team. Personally, that’s my target between now and the end of the season.

“We’re always critical of ourselves and we’ll be the first people to admit when performances haven’t been good enough. Today we haven’t got the three points, but it wasn’t down to a bad performances, it was just down to not taking chances.  We look to bounce back and come back stronger.

“There is never a Glasgow derby when you don’t have a point to prove. We will be up for it because we are desperate to get a result against them this season. That’s what we will be looking to do. And that spurs us on to end of the season as best we can. 

“The Scottish Cup is our trophy to defend and all the boys are desperate to do that. The boys were buzzing when they saw the news that it’s going to be played out this season. It’s a great opportunity for us to end the season on a high and we are looking to do that.”

Christie, who is out of contract in the summer of 2022, acknowledged that Celtic will have to be more clinical in the final third if they want to beat Rangers and win the Scottish Cup.

“It was a frustrating day,” he said. “Anybody who watched the game today would see we dominated from start to finish, but we just didn’t manage to have that final bit of quality in the final third so it was frustrating.

“We had 23 shots, 12 on target, so you come away wondering how you’ve not got on the scorehseet, especially keeping a clean sheet at the other end as well.

“We can take a lot of positives out of the performance because it’s a tough place to come. We’ve watched Dundee United and we know how well they can play. But we limited them to very few chances and created a lot ourselves. But we need to take those chances and we didn’t today.”