Callum McGregor

He’s good defensively, but he isn’t the answer there either.

It’s a position we keep half arsing and it’s continually costing us against any decent team.

 

He excels in the Scotland set up with physical players like McTominnay and McGinn around him but tonight he looked worryingly short of a yard at times and didn’t have a good game at all even when we were doing fine in the game.

 

Just don't get it, if it was one manager doing it I'd understand, but all 3 is bizarre.

I sort of get why Ange didn't sign a proper CDM, it was probably the thing I disagreed with him the most but you could maybe argue it went against his style of play? and you could chalk Rodgers down to having Brown in his first spell and then already having Iwata signed in his second. No idea why Lennon didn't bring a powerful CDM in, you'd think he would have with Wanyama being a standout last time.

 

Tbf, he wasn't helped tonight with how poor Hatate was tonight, if you play a 4-3-3 in the CL all those 3 in the middle need to be close to perfect..

Both, McGregor and Hatate were too far off it..

 

I'm only meaning in Europe. How many times tonight did you see Hatate or O'Riley the furthest forward pressing even ahead of Kyogo yet that never happened with McGregor and that's by design as he is the most defensive minded of the midfielders I don't even think there is an argument there tbh. In Europe he is our sitter and as good as he is that is going to be an issue as we have a massive lack of physicality and are constantly bullied in Europe

 

It might not be too late; but he at least needs to have his games managed now to have a chance of getting him to at his previous level. 1 game a week maximum.

Him and KT were massively overplayed under multiple managers and I think it shows. Someone on the medical side needs to explain this decision.

 

Hatate and McGregor in a double pivot, surely has to be tried..

 

Kicking the can down the road though. No matter who we play in there, it won’t be good enough.

 

I agree with the second part. We've needed to properly address it for years. It's not McGregor's fault he always gets played there, but I genuinely don't feel like he's let us down much.

 

I think Matt dropping back and helping out makes a massive difference, it worked well tonight imo. If we had CCV or even Philips instead of Gus we'd have been much more solid.

 

Iwata hasn't been tried in his favoured position tho, thought he looked really strong when he came on tonight at CB..

The conundrum is we don't need two sitting domestically, so Iwata gets zero game time.. that needs to change for me.

 

Ah, you’re meaning Iwata?

 

We essentially need a Mousa Dembele type of midfielder, would solve so many of our problems.

 

*.. my edit no quick enough

 

Think whether it's an out and out CDM or not we just need some more physicality in the side. Out with AJ and the centre halves we have no muscle or power middle to front so we get overrun by these CL teams who usually have athleticism as well as technical quality.

 

It was the same with Gordon. * had legs like Pinocchio.