Celtic will not keep Callum McGregor unless it proves it is worthy of him.

Yesterday, Paulina wrote an excellent article about Cameron Carter-Vickers and his plea to the board to sign players and give this team proper support. It is obvious that the playing squad itself is watching developments at our club very carefully. They all want to know what happens next.

Carter-Vickers is a great Celtic player. He has been a great servant to this club. But he is not Callum McGregor, and Callum McGregor’s view on where we are and where we might be headed is of vastly greater importance.

Yesterday, much of Celtic cyberspace locked on to the fact that he has recently changed agents and is now represented by the same firm which represents Brendan Rodgers and Ange Postecoglou, our two former managers. Both are in Saudi Arabia. Both love McGregor. Both know what he brings to a team.

Callum is at that point in his career where he may just start thinking seriously about the future. He is already a multi-millionaire. There is no question he has made money, perhaps enough money to last the rest of his life. But Callum has always struck me as one of those deeply pragmatic guys, someone capable of thinking beyond the next season and beyond the emotional pull of the moment.

He will want to make sure his family is provided for as well, and that presents a different level of challenge once his earnings from playing are gone. What does he do next? Not every player can land a gig at a national media outlet. There is not enough space at those tables for everyone who wants a seat, which is why it is all the more remarkable when you see some of the absolute cretins who have somehow leveraged their way into one.

Unless you are going into coaching and then management, you have to consider this your serious earnings window. As I wrote the other day about Jota, you have to think about all the possibilities, good and bad, which might lie in front of you. Callum is near the end of his career anyway. Serious injury now probably means a premature end, not a complete catastrophe, but still something which changes the final chapter.

So, if a life-changing, game-changing offer comes from Saudi Arabia for two years, one which would allow him to make more money than he could ever need in a lifetime, or five lifetimes, do not kid yourself that he would not consider it. And because Callum has no resale value to speak of outside a move like that, do not kid yourself that Celtic would not also consider it.

We may be in the closing stages of Callum McGregor’s Celtic career.

We cannot rule that out. We have to consider it a distinct possibility. And if you accept that Callum McGregor is one of the best players at this club, and one of the most important, then you have to ask yourself what it is worth to keep him here.

An improved contract? Yes. Certainly. Definitely. That has to be on the list of things you would do. But to get him to sign it, it is going to require more than flashing a little cash at him.

The bottom line is this: if Celtic are going to keep Callum McGregor at this club, then this club has to be worthy of Callum McGregor. At this moment in time, we are some distance from that goal.

We have not given him any real incentive to stay beyond appeals to emotion, and it is useless appealing to emotion when you are dealing with a hard-headed pragmatist. Callum McGregor may love this club. Kieran Tierney also loved this club, and it did not stop him leaving. John McGinn is a Celtic fan to his bones, and he did not respond positively to an appeal based on sentiment either.

Sentiment only gets you so far.

McGregor wants to play Champions League football and feel like he belongs at that level. To do that, he has to play as part of a team that belongs at that level, and we have never really built him such a team. That is the minimum he will require, and I completely understand why he might think he has reached his ceiling here.

Because he has watched what happened to Rodgers. He has watched what they did to O’Neill in January. He has watched what they tried to do over the coaching staff. He has watched the shambles of this pre-season, and he knows these people have no real loyalty to him. Worse than that, he knows they have done very little to earn his loyalty.

McGregor has worked under deeply serious managers, but he does not work under deeply serious executives. He knows it, because he is not stupid and cannot be treated as someone who is stupid.

McGregor knows what he watches every day. He knows the people around this club. If he believes the likes of Michael Nicholson and Brian Wilson are substantial figures, I would be astonished, because it is very clear to the rest of us that they are not.

Having witnessed Rodgers be completely undermined and undersold; having watched Rodgers’ vision for this club rejected out of hand by these men, what possible reason does McGregor have for believing things will be any different for Martin O’Neill? He has already seen how they treated Martin and how they treated his coaches.

In short, he knows that as long as these people are running Celtic, this club will never reach its full potential. And I think the best way to convince McGregor to stay is if he believes it at least tries to.

Callum McGregor could walk out of this club tomorrow, get on a plane to Saudi Arabia and never look back, and there is not a single Celtic supporter who would have anything but the fondest memories and offer their best wishes. Not a single one.

We do not even have a succession plan in place for this guy, which makes it all the more absurd. If he did walk tomorrow, we would have nothing with which to replace him.

That alone should signify to Callum that he is working for people who are not operating at his level, who are not of the quality he himself possesses. That may be a little heartbreaking for him. It may be a little sickening for him, as it is for us, but he cannot be a prisoner to emotion.

He has to put himself and his family first. He has to put his own satisfaction first and make the best decision available to him.

Callum is a serious man who likes to work with other serious people, and you do not get more serious than the two bosses he once played under. I do not know how serious their clubs are, but I will bet they are more serious than ours.

So, for me, if you want to see McGregor stay at Celtic for another year or more, you should not simply assume that he will. If you assume that he will stay out of some great love for Celtic, you are begging to be disappointed by the outcome.

This club has to prove it is worthy of Callum McGregor.

So far this summer, it has not even come close.

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