Si Ferry has made a bold call urging Martin O’Neill to drop captain Callum McGregor.
It’s a huge shout.
With Arne Engels back from injury and pushing for a start, Celtic’s midfield is suddenly crowded but someone has to make way.
And Ferry thinks it should be McGregor.
The captain has effectively started week in week out since he broke into the first team, but now he’s facing calls to be dropped ahead of Celtic’s biggest post-split run of games in recent years.
Performances at Celtic are well below the standard, and the team are struggling.
Speaking on the situation, he said on Open Goal:
“If you talk about getting overrun in midfield, Benjamin Nygren gets you 20 goals a season, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is scoring goals, so if somebody is to come out it would need to be him.
“A defensive midfielder for me now… I never see him breaking lines, I never see him do what he used to do. He’s safe, he’s simple.
“I don’t see him get up against people, win the ball back.
“If there’s going to be one dropping out, it would need to be McGregor.”
It’s a damning assessment of a player who has been a mainstay at Celtic for years.
But it underlines the dilemma. Nygren is producing numbers, even if performances split opinion. Oxlade-Chamberlain is delivering key moments, like Saturday.
And Reo Hatate, one of the squad’s most creative outlets, is still waiting in the wings. He didn’t get on the pitch in Dundee and came off the bench against St Mirren.
It’s a balancing act for O’Neill heading into these final games.
Drop your captain? Or sacrifice form and output elsewhere?
With the title race on the line, every decision now carries serious weight.
I’ve been calling for McGregor to be dropped for most of the season, he is nowhere near his best this season.
It is obvious he has lost a bit of pace and can’t recover the ball when he loses possession.
Totally agree.
Plays far too deep and all he does is slow the tempo to a standstill with his continual sideways, or more often, back passes.
Kills any momentum.
Always been vastly overrated, almost always anonymous v Huns & any half decent European side and IMO is never a captain.
The embarrassing crying at the Cup Final penalty defeat v Aberdeen was the final straw for me.