Tuesday Round-Up: Strachan - Calling Up McGregor Was ‘Easy’

THE BIG STORY: Scotland manager Gordon Strachan has said giving Callum McGregor a call-up for the upcoming double header against Slovakia and Slovenia as ‘easy’ and a ‘no-brainer’. Which begs the question: why did he only pick McGregor when Scotland had injuries in midfield? McGregor has been in great from for months and really should have been called up for Scotland before now.

Brendan Rodgers certainly thinks that the player can do a job for Scotland, as he texted Gordon Strachan ‘he will never let you down’, in reference to McGregor. Let’s hope McGregor does the biz for Scotland and returns to Celtic healthy, as we have a very busy schedule in the next few weeks.

OTHER NEWS: Included in Celtic’s busy schedule is the upcoming Champions League double header against Bayern Munich, and as expected Franck Ribery has been ruled out of both of those games with a knee ligament injury, which is expected to keep him out of the side for at least a month.

Here’s an interesting story, the viewing figures for the recent Celtic-Rangers game live on Sky Sports were fairly poor, with less than 300,000 watching on the Sky channels. This is still probably far more viewers than any other Scottish game will get this season but perhaps the game is just another fixture these days...

ON THIS DAY: In 2007, a last minute Scott McDonald goal gave Celtic a 2-1 Champions League Group Stage victory over AC Milan at Celtic Park. Stephen McManus put Celtic into the lead, and after a very contentious Kaka penalty levelled the tie justice was done when McDonald popped up with the winner. And as for Dida’s comedy ‘altercation’ with a fan after the winning goal...no comment.

In 2004, a brace from Chris Sutton and a Stan Petrov goal gave Celtic an easy 3-0 win over Dundee United at Tannadice. The game is best remembered for Juninho missing an absolute sitter as he tried in vain to score his first goal for Celtic.