Celtic central midfielder and captain Callum McGregor has had a fine start to life under Ange Postecoglou in the Scottish Premiership this season.

The Hoops academy product, now 28, has started six of their matches in the Premiership, averaging an eye-catching SofaScore rating of 7.02.

His impressive start to the campaign led to Postecoglou recently admitting that he wants to pin the midfielder down to a new contract as he believes McGregor is 'pivotal' heading into the next few years. He told the Glasgow Times:

“We’ll work on the players whose contracts are current and see what we need to do there. I’ve no doubt Cal’s going to be an important, pivotal figure in this football club for the next few years.

“The club will respect his position. We’ll start working on the structure off the field in terms of our staffing and how we do things, which is good. After a busy period we can start working on those things now."

McGregor is the pride of Parkhead having come through the academy to now starring in the first-team as captain, having made 339 senior appearances for the club to date.

The experienced skipper took over from Scott Brown upon Postecoglou's arrival and is now living the dream of every young Celtic fan as he wears the armband in the midfield week-in-week-out for his boyhood club.

It has now always been easy for McGregor at Celtic Park, however, as he hit a low point in April 2020. The Scotland international's value dropped down to £3.60m per Transfermarkt, the lowest it had been since January 2019.

This came after a poor run of form in the Europa League. He produced zero goals and one assist in seven matches, having managed zero goals and one assist in two qualifying games earlier in the campaign.

Instead of allowing his value to dip further, McGregor turned his form around and became a crucial player for Celtic in the Premiership. He ended the 2019/20 league campaign with nine goals and seven assists in 30 matches.

In the 2020/21 season, McGregor averaged a superb SofaScore rating of 7.07 as he registered three goals and seven assists. He averaged 1.5 key passes per game to highlight the creativity he offers in the middle of the park, whilst his average rating shows that he was able to perform consistently to a high level in the Premiership.

At the time of writing (08/10/21), McGregor is valued at £6.3m by Transfermarkt.

This is a 75% increase from the £3.6m he was valued at in April 2020, which shows that he has been able to battle back from adversary to establish himself as a crucial cog in the Celtic side - eventually leading to him earning the captain's armband.

McGregor is the pride of the academy and a shining light to those currently emerging through the ranks within the youth set-up. They will be able to look at him and see what he has achieved at Celtic and believe that they could follow in his footsteps.

AND in other news, Celtic could have a new Turnbull in rarely-seen 19 y/o who's an "outstanding talent"...