Celtic's Callum McGregor: I wanted to come back and show people that was a one-off

There are numerous ways in which this Scottish football season has entirely confounded expectations.

None has been more profound than the influence exerted by Callum McGregor as Celtic captain in his club’s title charge. It was considered an impossibility that the 28-year-old could fill the void created by the departure of Scott Brown’s following 12 years as the armband-wearing, belligerent-general driving force who underpinned a glittering era for the club. Yet, remarkably, McGregor’s importance to Celtic already seems on a par with his predecessor. He has been the soldering iron as Ange Postecoglou and a new team have been fused together, both in how he has directed operations on the pitch and how he has unified the new arrivals off it. His shortlisting in for the PFA Scotland and Scottish Football Writers’ player of the year awards is reflective of this monumental contribution.

Hurt is a powerful motivator, and the personable, considered nature of McGregor perhaps caused the inner turmoil he has been able to channel to propel Celtic’s rehabilitation this season to be under-appreciated. Last season was the first in his seven years in the club’s senior set-up that he hadn’t earned a league winners’ medal. The spectacular collapse in the pursuit of a record tenth title that allowed Rangers to walk away with the title by a massive 25 points provided McGregor with a cause. And one he was determined would not be forlorn, even as the squad was shorn of a raft of mainstays from the quadruple treble era and Ange Postecoglou arrived with the invidious task of comprehensively remaking the squad.

“When boys leave and it's the end of an era, a successful team, everybody then says ‘can they go again, can he do it again?’” said the