Greg Taylor hailed the return of Celtic captain Callum McGregor who as you would expect hit the ground running and played like he’s never been away. There was no playing himself back in, taking things easy to get up to speed from Calmac at Pittodrie.
Instead the Celtic captain out-passed the entire Aberdeen team single-handedly, scored the all important goal to secure the three points and in doing so restored the nine point lead at the top of the league looking down at theRangers and probably forced Jim Goodwin into a tactical re-think that could very much work in Celtic favour tomorrow night when the latest Ibrox outfit arrive at Pittodrie.
The Celtic left-back’s appreciation for his captain is all too apparent in his post-match interview on Saturday afternoon after Celtic’s 1-0 win against Aberdeen. As reported by Football Scotland, Taylor noted that it was not a bad return to action for Callum McGregor after ten weeks on the sidelines.
“It is massive to have the captain back and to get the winning goal and the man-of-the-match award on his first game after injury is not a bad return,” Taylor stated. “Fair play to Cal, he’s worked ever so hard on his rehab and he’s come back the same way he started the season. It’s not easy to come back after 10 weeks out. A guy like Cal thrives on playing and he regularly plays 50 or 60 games a season.
“You know how hard he would find being on the sidelines and looking on. It’s important to realise the boys who played when he was out put in such a massive shift because Cal is irreplaceable for us. It was unbelievable from them but Saturday was about Cal and the team and he was superb. It’s brilliant to have him back. Hopefully he can stay fit for the rest of the season,” Taylor stated.
“It’s not just one player that could fill the role that Cal has because he’s so vital to us. The whole game goes through him, he breaks up play, he creates chances and scores. It’s such a vital time in the season for him to come back.
“He’s not just a superb player but he makes everyone around him better and that’s an unbelievable quality for an individual to have in a team game. We had a break and a good strong week in Portugal and that’s probably helped Callum reintegrate with the group.”
On the ultra-cautious 8-0-2 formation as the extremely unhappy Aberdeen fans have described it over the weekend, Greg Taylor admits that The Celtic players were surprised by the tactics adopted by Jim Goodwin as they were fully expecting Aberdeen to make an effort to win the match on their home soil as is usually the case.
It’s not as if Aberdeen were in desperate need of a point due to being involved in a relegation dogfight – they are in third spot in the Scottish Premiership. Nor was the case that they were having trouble scoring goals, quite the opposite in fact as Aberdeen have two strikers who were in fine scoring form before the World Cup break.
“If I’m honest we expected them to come out and have more of a go,” Greg Taylor admitted after the 1-0 victory in a match where Aberdeen camped in and around their own box completely surrendering the midfield and as a result Celtic had one 80% possession in a match where the home side failed to have a single shot on target at Joe Hart in The Celtic goals.
“But every team has their belief on how they can get a result against us so fair play to them,” Taylor continued, happy enough with the three points having been secured thanks to that wonderful 87th minute strike from McGregor.
“They will probably feel because the game went on so long at 0-0 that they were hard done by. But if we analyse the performance they will realise there was only one team ever going to win the game” Taylor said. Afterwards Jim Goodwin called McGregor’s goal a ‘sucker punch’ but the only suckers there were the Aberdeen support who paid good money to watch that shocking tactical plan being tried and suffering throughout only to see it deservedly fall to pieces with that Callum McGregor goal,
“I don’t know what the possession stats were but we dominated the ball and the chances. I think it would have been pretty harsh if we had not come away with the three points,” Taylor added.
