“I think overall we probably played a bit too random.”
Cameron Carter-Vickers, Sunday 20th September 2026
“We sort of waste 45 minutes of football. We don’t really do things properly, shape of the team is not right.”
Callum McGregor, Wednesday 28th October 2026
We can sit on podcasts and piss and moan, and plenty do. Even pissing and moaning politely backed up by charts and videos doesn’t cut it for many. Which is fair enough. We are just some random nerds with time on our hands to shag spreadsheets.
However, when the two most experienced leaders in the dressing room at Celtic are candid - kryptonite to most professional footballers in the media trained inanity of mainstream interaction paradigms (worst band I ever saw) - we should listen.
Celtic have only dropped points in two SPFL matches this season, and these comments follow both those matches, a 0-1 defeat at home in a Glasgow derby, and Wednesday’s 2-2 draw at home to an improving Dundee United.
However, the season has also been punctuated by heavy defeats in Europe and in a League Cup tie, against a side managed by Derek McInnes for goodness sakes.
Two hitherto model professionals, with no past record of outspokenness, or in the case of Carter-Vickers, ever saying much at all, questioning the fundamental set up of the team is, therefore, noteworthy.
What follows is not my annual McGregor progress article (TL;DR: yep, he’s a bit older and doing a bit less, but still useful).
But it does have that most rare of beasts – the killer stat. 99.99% of football stats are not the silver bullet to explain a particular point about the complex interactions that make up a game.
However, the chances of finding one are never zero.
This is not a love song.