IT’S A GRAND NEW TEAM TO PLAY FOR
McGregor was eager to create ‘own piece of history’ with fresh group of Celtic stars
CALLUM McGREGOR surveyed the wreckage of Celtic’s failed ten-in-a-row bid and felt personally affronted.
A product of the club’s youth academy and a prominent figure in multiple title wins under three different managers, McGregor was almost uniquely invested in the tilt for the ten.
But after a decade of unfettered dominance, Celtic’s quest to take their title sequence into double digits collapsed early in a miserable season, played out in empty stadiums.
The championship was ceded to Rangers as early as the first week in March of last year, and McGregor admits he stewed for the remainder of the campaign, knowing full well he was one of few likely to stick around for the required rebuild.
Manager Neil Lennon had already left the building while his supposed successor Eddie Howe was refusing to commit.
Captain Scott Brown had agreed a contract with Aberdeen, while highvalue stars like Odsonne Edouard,
Kristoffer Ajer and Ryan Christie had one foot through the exit door.
There was no question of McGregor joining them. He could easily have agitated and found himself a suitor in the Premier League, perhaps even further afield.
Yet his heart, his vocation, remained in Glasgow.
A new Celtic needed to emerge and he resolved to lead from the front. Appointed Brown’s successor as club captain by Ange Postecoglou, McGregor has been true to his word.
Victory over Rangers in today’s final derby of the season will effectively wrap up the title with three games to spare. And later tonight, the midfielder could crown a wonderful season by being named the PFA Scotland Player of the Year.
‘What we went through as a club last season, I took it personally,’ says McGregor. ‘I wanted to come back and show people that it was a one-off and that we could go again.
‘There were a lot of questions last summer. When these boys leave and it’s the end of an era, everybody then asks can they go again? Can he do it again?
‘Off the back of a poor season, we had to come back and show people that we would go and be successful.
‘That was the biggest thing. I wanted us to be a successful team in our right.
‘Not just “that was Brendan’s team” or “that was Lennon’s team” or “Broony’s team” or whatever.
‘We had to create our own history within that as a new group of players. That was the biggest challenge when we came back from the summer.’
That strength of character appealed to Postecoglou, the leftfield managerial appointment made in the wake of Howe’s decision to finally turn the job down.
The Australian did not appoint McGregor captain immediately but the move was inevitable almost from their first meeting as the team commenced pre-season training.
Aside from anything, Postecoglou needed a degree of continuity as he continued to throw new recruits at his starting line-up almost on a game-by-game basis as friendly matches gave way to competitive action last summer.
Although still regularly a seven-out-of-ten midfield performer, McGregor’s performances had inevitably dipped amid the team’s malaise last term.
His involvement at the Euros was the perfect palette cleanser. Paired with Billy Gilmour in central midfield, McGregor shone as Steve Clarke’s side claimed a draw against eventual finalists England at Wembley.
Postecoglou was there watching that night and would have been further impressed as McGregor scored his first Scotland goal a few days later, albeit in a defeat to Croatia.
‘I was away at the Euros but the manager reached out with a message,’ he says. ‘I went back for pre-season, we talked and straight away I think we both really liked each other.
‘He laid out his vision and plans for the team and it just sort of rolled from there. He is a classy guy anyway but he made me feel good and at ease.
‘It might have been easy for him to make me captain immediately but you want it on your own merit. You want him to come in and see for himself what you are about.
‘So I think the way he did it was spot-on.
‘I was trying to lead in terms of performance and the way I do things every day. I think he had to see that for himself rather than maybe listen to other people and take the easy option.’
Postecoglou’s eye for a player helped further ingratiate himself with the remaining squad players like McGregor, Nir Bitton and James Forrest.
A dozen players were recruited in that first window with Joe Hart, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Jota and Kyogo Furuhashi just four of the resoundingly successful pieces of recruitment.
McGregor added: ‘When the manager and players came through the door, I thought: “They fancy this”. You could see it in their eyes.
‘With that sheer volume of players, you do wonder if they can all adapt and hit the ground running but pretty much everyone has.
‘And the beauty of this group is there’s still more to come, more development in the players with the way the manager wants to play to try and take us to the next level.’
And yet success wasn’t instantaneous. While McGregor opened his account for the season with a stunning goal against Midtjylland, the Danes prevailed in a tight Champions League qualifier that went to extra-time.
The Europa League continued to expose the flaws in the newly-assembled team and there were also three away defeats in the opening six Premiership fixtures. Postecoglou refused to alter his demanding, high-pressing style of football even as fatigue and defensive exposure threatened to undermine his efforts.
‘The manager has a tunnel-vision way of looking at things,’ says McGregor. ‘It is his way and he totally believes in it, which then rubs off on the players because everyone buys in.
‘His style naturally suits the way I want to play. He’s always talking about playing two-touch, playing quickly, playing forward, playing between the lines and he wants his whole team to do that.
‘He talks about being a young kid playing football at seven, eight years old. What did you want to do? You wanted loads of touches on the ball, you wanted to be attacking, play forward.
‘He said he wanted to take us back to being that kid who’s just desperate to touch the ball.
‘When I heard he was being appointed, I spoke to Tom (Rogic) and he said: “You’ll enjoy this, really good football, loads of rotation and interchanging of position”.
‘From day one, he was dead set and that was music to my ears. Very quickly you saw that he was a top manager, he was going to get his
own players in and the whole thing has taken off from there.
‘There was always going to be a bedding-in period and when we got to the end of September we knew that if we wanted to win the league we had to be pretty much perfect.
‘Even if we were losing or drawing, you could see the makings of a good team. It was just whether we could get a big result to make us feel good about ourselves.
‘I think the Aberdeen game away from home was a big moment, proof that we could go away from home, play that style and win in a difficult venue. It gave the players the belief to really kick on.’
That psychological hurdle cleared, Celtic also needed to prove their mettle against their biggest rivals.
Under Steven Gerrard, Rangers had gradually exerted dominance in the fixture and the former Liverpool captain signed off from the fixture with a 1-0 win at Ibrox last August.
The next meeting of the teams would not arrive until early February, by which time Celtic had bedded in virtually a whole team’s worth of players and added three more in the early days of the winter window.
Two — Reo Hatate and Matt O’Riley — started against a Rangers team by then managed by Giovanni van Bronckhorst, with Hatate scoring twice in a resounding 3-0 win. A much steelier performance was required in the visit to Ibrox last month but goals from Rogic and Carter-Vickers got the job done after Aaron Ramsey put Rangers ahead in a frenetic start. McGregor (left) admits the fixture has been crucial to the season’s narrative.
‘It’s two top teams fighting it out for the league,’ he says. ‘Normally, people say these games take care of themselves and it’s then about your form in the rest of the games.
‘But both teams have actually been good against the rest of the league. If you can win in those four games, it will pretty much get you over the line, so these games have been big. The one at Ibrox a few weeks ago was huge in terms of getting that six-point gap and now we just need to close it up.’
If Celtic do indeed prevail today then focus will start to shift to next season and the almost certain automatic qualification for the Champions League.
Although Postecoglou’s side were picked apart by Bayer Leverkusen and Real Betis at various points of the Europa League campaign, McGregor believes Celtic have evolved and will be better equipped for a Euro challenge next term.
And, if they do indeed go up against Europe’s elite, he expects the manager to demand that they do so by sticking to their pure football principles.
‘I think the manager will definitely believe that,’ smiles McGregor. ‘Playing against the better teams, I always think that if you pass the ball and make them run after it, they don’t want to do that. They would rather we just kicked it and gave them it back.
‘You have to be brave, of course. You have to take the ball in and test your technique. But I go back to it, good players don’t want to run, they want the ball, so if you make these teams run you definitely get half a chance.’