Celtic cautious over Callum McGregor as Brendan Rodgers admits captain is 'not out of the woods'

Midfielder being carefully managed following return from injury

Celtic captain Callum McGregor made his return from injury off the bench against Rangers at Ibrox last weekend. (Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group)

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has warned that captain Callum McGregor is “not out of the woods" despite making his injury comeback off the bench in last weekend’s 3-3 draw against Rangers.

Rodgers admitted that the Achilles issue which kept the midfielder out for five weeks and saw miss Scotland's Euro 2024 warm-up matches against Netherlands and Northern Ireland will still need to be monitored carefully.

McGregor was introduced as a 65th minute replacement for Reo Hatate at Ibrox on Sunday and came through the match unscathed.

“He has come through well,” Rodgers explained. “We are still clearly managing him. He did absolutely incredible to be available for the game. The timeline was beyond Rangers. But he worked so hard, he wanted to put himself out there.

“He had only trained a few days coming into the game, so this week has been another good week for him. We just have to manage it, he is not out the woods at all.

“But seeing him in training earlier, he looked really good. But it’s also recognising that he had been out quite a long time and, no matter who you are, if you’ve missed five-odd weeks of training, you are not obviously going to be at your best level of football fitness-wise.”

McGregor is available for Saturday's match against St Mirren but Daizen Maeda has been ruled out with a hamstring injury that could see him miss the rest of the season while Liam Scales will also sit out with a minor strain.