Save Our Captain!

The "McGregor as a single pivot" risk has slipped down the priority list, given the emerging bin fires. It needs to be revisited.

The Huddle Breakdown started life as the Scott Brown breakdown. So agitated did James become about the incoming risks associated with the decline of Brown as the holding midfielder within Neil Lennon’s Celtic, he wrote some articles on the subject on my old Celtic By Numbers site.

When, eventually, we were corralled into shape by “the Professional”, Enda Coll, and a podcast was born, this became one of the key themes of the 2020-21 season, where The Huddle Breakdown emerged, phoenix-like, from the burning cauldron of a chaotic campaign. Well, not so much a phoenix, more a twirping, insistent, irritating small bird that won’t shut up.

As we stare into an unravelling mess of a season, we appear to have come full circle. A 32-year-old captain is being asked to anchor the team behind a misfiring forward line, a dysfunctional midfield, and in front of a creaking defence riddled with injury risk.

His last-minute dithering at Ibrox, caught on the ball just outside the Celtic area (by Cyriel Dessers, for Christ’s sake!), was reminiscent of the moment your favourite uncle can’t remember where he is or who you are, and you realise with deep sadness that time has caught up with a beloved one. I am exaggerating, in bad taste probably, for dramatic effect, but this is a long way from the driven, decisive captain, always in control, always a step ahead, that we are used to.

Is Callum McGregor failing Celtic, or are Celtic failing McGregor?

Like with Brown, I have a framework ready to go, given the perennial nature of this debate. McGregor has the equivalent of 5.69 90 minutes this season. However, the opposition has been, with respect, modest.