HOOPY RETURN
Celtic skipper Callum McGregor ramps up Kieran Tierney return talks as he declares ‘I’ve been in war with him’
The captain has also defender one of his team-mates amid recent criticism
CALLUM McGREGOR has backed Brendan Rodgers to take Celtic to the next level with his January additions.
The Hoops boss held a transfer summit with Dermot Desmond in Dublin last week as he looks to strengthen his squad.
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McGregor’s old team-mate Kieran Tierney is among the top targets, and the Hoops skipper said: “When you’re at a big club, the demands are so high that you always have to be at the maximum level and push yourself, the squad, everybody.
“Come January we might have a few new faces in, and that will push the group further and the squad will get stronger.
“We’ll see what happens, but it’s always good to have new faces to push everyone.
“In every window we do look to strengthen. The club will always try and do the best deals they can.
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“Naturally, at a big club there’s always competition for places.
“It just remains to be seen what happens, but the guys who do come in, we’ll get them up to speed as quickly as possible.”
SunSport revealed Celts are in pole position to bring Tierney back to Paradise, after Arsenal opted not to take up a year’s contract option.
Pressed on a possible reunion with his old Celts and Scotland team-mate, McGregor added: “He’s a quality player. I’ve been in war with him for a number of years now!
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“Kieran’s a good guy, we’ll see what happens. I’ve not spoken to him yet, but I’ve seen all the stuff that’s been written.
“I don’t know too much about it. We’re generally the last ones to know. When someone appears in the building, we’ll go and meet them.”
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Celtic were held to a 0-0 by Dundee United on Sunday, and are now nine points clear of Rangers at the top.
McGregor expects a big reaction when they host Motherwell on Boxing Day.
He said: “There are a lot of games coming up and we don’t want one result to snowball into two and three.
“The lead we have is a product of how good we’ve been this season.
“But we don’t want to have too many of these days where you start to chase your tail a little bit.
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“We know what the problem was against United but we dust ourselves down and move on from it.
“We have been here many times before and we know how to handle it.”
McGregor also defended Kyogo Furuhashi after he fluffed a late chance to hit a winner at Tannadice.
He added: “Kyogo will be fine. Yeah, he missed the chance on Sunday, but how many goals has he scored for us?
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“He’s won us countless big games and trophies. In the big moment he’s been the go-to man for us.
“Strikers will miss chances. It’s no problem We go again as a team.”
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