McGregor can’t make the same mistake if Rodgers comes calling again
CALLUM McGREGOR has spoken plenty in the past about how he spends his evenings curling up in front of the telly and watching football games. A penny for his thoughts, then, at the sight of his old mentor Brendan Rodgers taking care of Chelsea on Monday night and putting Leicester City, albeit briefly, at the head of the English Premier League.
McGregor could have been part of that. Instead, he has wasted the last 18 months hanging around at a club whose hubris and lack of perspective has reduced them to the role of bottom-feeders in Europe and blown the one real incentive there was for talent to remain — the prospect of creating domestic history with ten in a row.
The talk is that Celtic now realise they need to overhaul the entire footballing structure in the summer. Like this is some kind of masterplan-in-the-making rather than a case of stating the bleedin’ obvious.
McGregor, with a contract running until 2024, would surely fit into the rebuild as the new club captain — unless the insanity inside the building sees Scott Brown given a new deal (and, let’s face it, anything seems possible right now).
However, that’s hardly as attractive as it might have been a few years ago. Celtic’s lack of foresight, their lack of forward planning amid a scattergun transfer policy, leaves them facing the prospect of most of the current squad shipping out along with the coaching staff in the summer.
The same thing happened when Rangers let ‘The Ten’ slip through their fingers in 1998, of course. The old guard moved out and Dick Advocaat moved in.
The difference is that Advocaat’s multi-million pound refit did not come against the backdrop of a global pandemic, no crowds (other than those standing in the Parkhead car park to hang up painted bedsheets demanding heads on sticks) and an almost inevitable collapse in season-ticket sales.
Even if money does appear from somewhere to finance a reconstruction project, would you really trust the people currently running Celtic to get it right?
These are the people who have somehow managed to turn unprecedented financial and structural advantages over an extended period to dust. The people who brushed aside constant failure and steady deterioration in Europe because they were winning treble Trebles at home against teams with a fraction of their resources — and didn’t want to heed the signposts indicating the possibility of trouble ahead.
Many of McGregor’s pronouncements, those post-match reflections when anger gets the better of diplomacy, suggest he knows fine well what a mess it has become. And bearing in mind the fact that Rodgers — and the eye he keeps on his former club — has never really gone away, he has to reflect seriously what he wants from his career from this point on.
McGregor made a mistake in not kicking up a stink when Rodgers tried to buy him in the summer of 2019 and was sent packing. The jungle drums are beating again about the Northern Irishman seeing Odsonne Edouard as the long-term replacement for Jamie Vardy and you can be sure further speculation over his lasting admiration for McGregor won’t be far behind.
Rodgers transformed the midfielder’s career at Parkhead. ‘His view of the game is up there with the very best,’ said the former Liverpool boss at the time.
He fielded him in all kinds of positions. Indeed, he even joked he would expect a call from the NFL to ask McGregor to go and play quarterback if the legendary Tom Brady got injured.
In addition to that adaptability, McGregor remains fit and available pretty much every week. The Glasgow to London Sleeper doesn’t rack up as many miles. His problem is that he is in danger of getting stuck in reverse gear.
McGREGOR is intelligent, with the materials to grace a higher stage. However, like everyone in green-andwhite, he has had a grim season. He did help Scotland reach a first major finals but, purely on current form, he might not get in the team when the Euros come round.
He blundered 18 months ago when reporting himself content to stay where he was and sign a new deal. The club was open to selling Kieran Tierney, four years his junior, to Arsenal and he should have pushed for the same permission to further his career.
McGregor turns 28 this summer and ought to make sure he gets through the Parkhead exit door at the next available opportunity — because there won’t be many chances after that. I mean, if ever a week showed it is time to desert a sinking ship, it was surely this one.
After drawing at home to Livingston last weekend, the final piece of evidence to prove there is nothing coming through the youth system, McGregor spoke about how the team ‘didn’t really understand the game’. After losing 4-1 at home to Sparta Prague’s reserves, he described the side as ‘so disjointed it’s unbelievable’.
Lord knows what he made of being unable to beat Livvy’s reserves a few days later. Or Neil Lennon’s public appearances before and after.
The manager’s pre-match rant against the world — a few salient points being buried underneath a whirlwind of spurious accusations and victimhood that further weakened his tired-looking chief executive Peter Lawwell — carried the look and air of a state-TV address from some old-school Eastern European dictator as the military coup is playing out just the other side of his office door.
His more low-key remarks at a snowbound Tony Macaroni Arena about not knowing where the team of a year ago has gone and insisting people need perspective — yes, Celtic have happily surrendered ‘The Ten’ after a decade of rolling around in money while everyone else was in bits — just gave greater credence to all those who insisted the club’s fate was set in stone the minute he was handed the boss’s job in the Hampden showers.
It is sad to see Lennon like this. He should quit, but he won’t. There is no point in even talking about his future. It is irrelevant now. And boring.
Celtic, inexplicably, gave up the ghost on this season of all seasons months ago when allowing him to remain in charge.
It is time for McGregor, if he has any ambition, to join the likes of Edouard and Kristoffer Ajer in giving up on them and getting out. Whatever it takes.