KEOWN: McGregor must call time on Hoops career
QUADRUPLE Trebles and 10-In-A-Row will be enough to divert most of the happy clappers at Celtic from the depressing reality of a £50million-plus wage bill delivering yet another season of comprehensive failure in Europe. It shouldn’t blindside Callum McGregor.
He needs to get out of Parkhead this summer and test himself at a better level of football before it’s too late. Otherwise, he is going to end up flogged to death by a lunatic schedule at a club that seems happy to lump the kind of workload upon him that would make a pit pony start asking for a piece break.
Word is that Brendan Rodgers is ready to have another nibble at getting McGregor down to Leicester City after being politely told to sling his hook last summer. Whether punters look upon that as the equivalent of signing your soul over to Satan or not, it would be an opportunity the midfielder surely cannot allow to pass again.
Rodgers did so much to make McGregor the player he is during those blissful days when Rangers supporters stopped in the middle of the Clyde Tunnel to wash his feet and Celtic fans already had his place reserved in eternity as the patron saint of beautiful smiles.
As manager at Parkhead, he played him in different positions within different tactical shapes, heightened his game knowledge and his selfbelief. It was a mutually beneficial partnership and one that would now offer the player about as much protection and assurance as you could possibly get when deciding to enter the shark-infested waters of genuine, top-level football.
The way the English Premier League table looks right now, Rodgers will also be able to offer Champions League football next season at a club whose ambitions may even be big enough to overcome the fact they have Lee Congerton as their head of senior recruitment.
If he comes calling, it is a no-brainer. Even if he doesn’t, McGregor should have his representatives putting the feelers out for a new challenge anyway.
He is 27 in June, an ideal age to take the next step in his career. He is certainly good enough to play in a better league. A season scarred by European exits to inferior, lesser-resourced clubs in Cluj and Copenhagen also has to focus his mind on what more Celtic really have to offer him.
Forget 10-In-A-Row and all that for a moment. It means about as much globally as two seagulls squabbling over a poke of chips in a bin.
The truth is that Celtic, dominant in Scotland or not, are regressing.
When running a £60m wage bill under Rodgers, they were at least making it to the group stage of the Champions League before routinely losing seven goals at a time to richer opposition.
Now, they can’t even make it that far. Indeed, it is starting to look like the last 32 of the Europa League is pretty much their level, which raises all sorts of deeper doubts about their wider approach to squad building.
McGregor’s statistics provide an added layer of questions over their squad management too.
Look, there are plenty of sports science bods inside Lennoxtown. They clearly believe McGregor’s body can cope with what is being asked of it.
From the outside, though, it is hard to see how he can carry on playing so many games season after season in the longer-term without paying some kind of physical or psychological price.
Last season, he played more than anyone else in world football, racking up 69 appearances for club and country and playing just short of 6,000 minutes.
He had 12 days off in the summer and has already played 53 times this season and been on the park 4,704 minutes in total. Once again, no one else in any other league has played more.
Why? According to their official website, Celtic have 10 central midfielders in their first-team squad. They have another one loaned out to Genk in the form of Eboue Kouassi.
They spent £2m in January on Ismaila Soro, who simply seems to have taken Kouassi’s place in the locked broom cupboard under the stairs — otherwise known as the Marvin Compper Suite — alongside Boli Bolingoli, Daniel Arzani and Maryan Shved.
Are the club’s other midfielders so untrustworthy that they can’t step in now and again to see off the might of Hamilton or Ross County? Does McGregor have to play every single game? His only day off since the winter shutdown came against Clyde in the Scottish Cup and he’s on target to find himself playing just short of 70 matches again.
Sure, he isn’t the type to complain. He said during the winter break that he wants to start every week. But he would say that, wouldn’t he? In the same interview, he admitted he does little in his spare time other than sit on the couch watching telly and sleep. No wonder.
Moving to England might bring other challenges, including a more intense level of competition, but it wouldn’t put him through the wringer like this. McGregor need only compare notes with Andy Robertson on Scotland duty later this month for evidence of that.
Of outfield players in the English top flight, Robertson in the other.is in the top 10 in terms of minutes played. Fit and available throughout, he has started 28 of Liverpool’s 29 league fixtures and came on as a sub
By comparison, though, he has spent 3,514 minutes on the pitch. Last night’s visit to Watford was his 41st outing in total.
Liverpool, of course, don’t have the early-season qualifiers Celtic do. However, they have also left Robertson out of FA Cup and Carabao Cup ties to give him a break.
Just like last year, Celtic will have to sanction a big sale this summer to balance the books and Odsonne Edouard, now crying out for a club with real European ambitions, just like Moussa Dembele before him, will almost certainly move on.
Scottish football has been good for Edouard, but he simply has to try himself on a greater stage. The same goes for McGregor.
He stayed put last summer after seeing Kieran Tierney get his dream move to Arsenal, signing a new five-year deal in the process, but shouldn’t settle for waving other senior team-mates off into the wild blue yonder again.
Loyal as he may be to the club which raised him, they are now only going to hold him back. Or burn him out.