Show McGregor some respect

Callum McGregor has spent so long holding Celtic together that it’s easy to forget there was a time when he wasn’t the one everyone looked to. You think back to that loan at Notts County, the skinny kid with the neat touch and the tidy feet, and then you look at the captain now, the one who’s dragged Celtic through more storms than sunshine these past few years, and you realise how much weight he’s carried without ever making a fuss about it.

There’s a moment this season that sums him up. That photo of him staring at Wilfried Nancy’s tactics board, head tilted, eyes narrowing, the whole thing looking like someone had handed him a crossword in a language he didn’t speak. Thirty‑three days of chaos, and McGregor barely said a word publicly. He just tried to keep the place from falling apart.

McGregor is now thirty‑two, with calf and Achilles issues that don’t just disappear because a club needs him. Five hundred and sixty‑eight games in his legs. Ten league titles. Eight League Cups. Six Scottish Cups. A career’s worth of miles in a decade. He gave up Scotland duty to preserve himself for Celtic, which tells you everything about where his heart sits.

But this season has been different. You can see it in the way he moves, the way he tries to knit things together while the midfield around him keeps changing shape. Hatate off the boil. Engels injured. Oxlade‑Chamberlain, Bernardo, McCowan all trying to find the rhythm that used to come naturally. McGregor still wants to be the metronome, but the gears around him aren’t turning the way they used to, and sometimes he looks like a man trying to conduct an orchestra that’s missing half its instruments.

And yet he keeps playing. Keeps pushing through niggles. Keeps trying to be the one who steadies everything. Martin O’Neill even admitted he wanted to play through a knock at the weekend. That’s who he is. But it’s also why so many Celtic fans are torn. They adore him. They worry about him. They know the club has leaned on him too hard for too long.

Whatever happens next, whether he stays, goes, or becomes the wise old head guiding the next midfielder through, Callum McGregor’s story at Celtic is already carved into the place.