Callum McGregor captained Celtic to a comfortable 5-0 victory over Partick Thistle in the Betfred League Cup quarter-final on Wednesday evening.
It was his 18th appearance of the season if you include his international fixtures for Scotland and we are only two months in. For a player that played 69 times last season (per The Scotsman), Celtic need to be careful of running the £20m rated midfielder into the ground.
There’s no doubt McGregor is an integral part of this dominant Celtic team, 239 appearances for the club back this up but did he really need to play against Thistle in the league cup?
It was an ideal opportunity to rest McGregor, either through changing formation, or by moving somebody like Nir Bitton into midfield. Lennon had Olivier Ntcham and Tom Rogic in the centre of the park and could easily have promoted a youngster or played Scott Sinclair in a more central position.
With Celtic involved in the Europa League and McGregor one of the first names in the Scotland team, he could be in for another 60 game season. A week off at this time of year could’ve been a perfect chance to refresh him going into the next run of fixtures.
Celtic have a tough run of fixtures including Cluj and Lazio in the Europa League and Hibernian, Aberdeen and Livingston in the league, Lennon may look to the “easier on paper” games against Ross County and St Mirren to rest McGregor.
With Rogic returning to the Bhoys match day squad, Lennon now has the resources to allow McGregor a much needed game off in the near future. He will have Ryan Christie, Scott Brown and Ntcham all available so, there really isn’t any excuse to continue to play him for 90 minutes in every game.
McGregor is a key player, but he won’t be much use if he is running on empty or even worse, sitting in the stand injured from not getting any time to recover. Lennon has to go easy on his talented midfielder if he is to continue to get the best from him.