Martin O’Neill is apparently in the dark about Callum McGregor’s intentions.
After watching the quality of the squad run down by Michael Nicholson, McGregor went through three changes in management last season.
After forcing Brendan Rodgers into resigning Nicholson declared Wilfried Nancy as the outstanding candidate to take over.
Nancy was almost as big a disaster as the current Celtic CEO.
Fortunately the Frenchman was sacked after 33 days of damage. Nicholson is approaching five years of inactivity as CEO of Celtic.
McGregor has watched everything unfold from inside the club.
Towards the end of last season he spoke out about hoping that the club would match his own ambitions.
Seven weeks after winning the Scottish Cup Nicholson has added one player to the squad.
Marcelo Saracchi and Kelechi Iheanacho have left.
With a Champions League Play Off five weeks away it is obvious that Celtic are preparing for Europa League Thursday’s.
And another domestic grind to keep the SPFL Premiership exciting and competitive.
Clearly McGregor has reservations about what is in store.
MARTIN O’NEILL MISSES THE POINT
As he likes to do O’Neill chooses to ignore the real issue.
If McGregor leaves it is for footballing reasons, not financial.
Celtic’s three favoured media partners have been given access to O’Neill at Celtic’s training base in the Algarve.
Discussing the future of McGregor, The Sun reports O’Neill saying:
Are there no fears about him leaving in my eyes? Oh gosh, I didn’t say that. I never know about anybody leaving.
He’s changed agents? Apparently so. He hasn’t hinted to me he wants to leave at this minute.
That would be a bad blow. But sometimes money is a big thing, particularly when you’re past thirty.
If McGregor leaves it won’t be driven by money.
He has watched the un-managed decline of Celtic first hand.
In the summer of 2024 he stepped down from playing for Scotland. At that time he had Kyogo Furuhashi, Nicolas Kuhn, Matt O’Riley and Adam Idah as team-mates at club level. Being competitive in the new look Champion League was a reasonable expectation.
Over the coming weeks Nicholson is looking to send the Celtic bank balance over the £100m mark. By selling Arne Engels, Daizen Maeda, Alistair Johnston and Auston Trusty.
O’Neill added:
So I will have a chat with him but he hasn’t brought it up at this moment. Maybe if he doesn’t speak to me, it’ll be all right!
But if he does, I will tell him we want him at the club. If something comes in that is just mind-boggling for him, that becomes a different issue.
It won’t be a mind boggling move that takes McGregor away from Celtic.
It will be watching the team stripped of quality to boost the bank balance.
At the age of 33 McGregor should be getting help around him to extend his playing time and career.
Instead the team is more reliant on him that ever.
The quality that Ange Postecoglou brought in has almost ran it’s race.
Rodgers signed Idam and Kuhn. Celtic cashed in on those players after 18 months with Shin Yamada the replacement.
It is an insult to McGregor to suggest that if he leaves Celtic it will be driven by financial reasons.
Over the last five years he will have been well paid.
Hopefully he has taken sounder financial advise than to pile in on dubious Film Investment Plans that plans that saw a number of leading figures hit with huge bills from HMRC with some big names like Duncan Ferguson and Danny Murphy forced to declare themselves bankrupt.
