Brendan Rodgers had the Scottish media pack laughing at themselves after Callum McGregor picked up his first ever SPFL Player of the month.
The Celtic captain has a skip full of domestic winners medals, he has never lost a domestic cup final with three SFA Youth Cup winners medals picked up from his time before breaking into the first team.
Despite playing a central role in winning five trebles McGregor has never done enough to convince the football reporters that he was player of the month.
Last season Ryan Strain, Abdallah Sima, Blair Spittal and Alan Forrest were among the prize guys as McGregor powered Celtic to the double with Lawrence Shankland twice winning the award.
Three goals in five matches during August finally earned the Celtic skipper the long overdue award with his manager more aware than anyone of the midfielder’s contribution.
After breaking through in Ronny Deila’s first season in charge the 15/16 season saw McGregor drift slowly out on contention, when Rodgers arrived in May 2016 not many people were looking at the Academy graduate to be involved under the former Liverpool boss.
Stefan Johanssen started the season alongside Scott Brown, Nir Bitton and Stuart Armstrong replaced the Norwegian who left for Norway but gradually McGregor worked his way into favour.
7 minutes (it doesn’t surprise me up here to be honest)
QUESTION: He has just won his first Player of the Month award. That may be surprising but that just goes to show what is expected of him and the consistency level at a club like this, doesn’t it?
Brendan Rodgers: It doesn’t surprise me up here to be honest! The boy has been working at some level What I love about Callum and it is also what this club brings you. Being at Celtic is all about a culture of winning and to be a winner there is a process involved in that. That process is training and when you are in the programme for long enough what you will be is a player who is super fit, intense and consistent and that’s Callum McGregor. That all comes from being a Celtic player. You need the intensity to be here, you need the focus, and you get that fitness.
The other Celtic boys here the likes of Tony Ralston, Stephen Welsh, James Forrest – that’s what they bring. Callum as the captain really typifies what being a Celtic player is. Performing consistently at the level that I know these guys have been at from when I was up here the first time then it is a surprise that this is Callum’s first Player of the Month award and that fact is correct.
McGregor has won trebles under three different managers, at the age of 31 and without the distraction of international football there is every reason to think that his performance levels are at least going to be maintained.
Today’s conference with Rodgers was again all-in with no separate slots set aside for newspapers, something that was done away with last season when an off the record briefing was reported by Keith Jackson in the Daily Record.
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