CALLUM McGregor will, as he has in every game since being handed the Celtic captaincy, draw on the lessons he learned and advice he received from Scott Brown when he squares up to his friend and former team mate for the first time at Parkhead this afternoon.

McGregor will be doing his utmost to help the hosts beat the Aberdeen side that Brown is now a member of in the cinch Premiership fixture and maintain the pressure on league leaders Rangers.

But if he leads Ange Postecoglou’s men to a victory he will know that he has a great deal to thank one of the visiting players for. 

The Scotland internationalist has filled the considerable void that his fellow midfielder left both in the dressing room and on the pitch when he departed the Glasgow giants after 14 years at the end of the 2020/21 campaign.

Training and playing alongside his predecessor for so long and watching how he conducted himself as skipper, meant he had no need to ask him for any tips when he moved into the important role.  

“We were always talking,” said McGregor. “Scott was brilliant for me when I was coming through in terms of always giving me any help he could.

 “Then over the last few years we got really close and he was always helping me so it wasn’t a case of sitting down and having that type of chat.

“He was such a great leader so there were always bits where I would try and learn off what he would do in any given situation. But I would also be trying to put my own spin on it as well.”

Asked what had impressed him most about Brown as a skipper, McGregor said: “Just the way he led. He was always such a presence in the changing room. He took the responsibility for the players on his shoulders and just kind of let everyone else go and play.

 “I think that is important, that the guys feel they have got a go to. I will take the responsibility and let them play, let them enjoy their football. That was something he was very good at, being that focal point in the dressing room.”

He added: “Scott coming back to Celtic Park for the first time since he left the club will be a big occasion for him and it will be good to see him. At the same time, we have to look at the game itself because we need three points.

“That means trying to take the emotion out of it as much as possible to focus on what we need to do. Once the game is over we will have a chat, but for the 90 minutes both of us will be doing everything we can to win the game for our respective teams.”

McGregor has helped Postecoglou’s new-look side to recover from their erratic start to the season, climb the Premiership table and make it through to the Premier Sports Cup final in the last couple of months.

However, he knows the demands at Celtic are constant and is acutely aware of the need to maintain their impressive form in the coming weeks; the match today is the first of no fewer than 11 they have in three different competitions over the festive period.

“This is a really important time,” he said. “When you get to the end of November and into December there are so many games. You are getting them coming at you every three or four days. You are in a cycle of play, recovery for the next game and then play again. But we are at Celtic and you want to be playing in the big games.

“This is always a part of the season we look at and say if we can go really strong between now and the break then hopefully we will be in a good position come the turn of the year. So we try and build momentum, both in terms of our performances in the games and the results.

 “If you can get into that pattern and the team are feeling good and you are getting results then it can quite quickly snowball into a real bit of good momentum. That is something we have always tried to do and I am pretty sure we will be trying to do again this time around.”

McGregor will do everything he can to make sure the summer signings, Joe Hart, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Josip Juranovic, James McCarthy, Liel Abada, Jota, Georgios Giakoumakis and Kyogo Furuhashi, maintain their high standards up until the winter break next month.

“We just have to look at what we are doing, our games, our performances and our results,” he said. “We are a relatively new team with a lot of new players and a lot of young players so we have to try to focus on what we are doing and trying to improve every time we are on the training pitch.

“Do that well and then when the games come around we will try and make sure we take maximum points. There are a lot of big games coming up and we want to maximise the number of points and wins we can get as much as we can.”