Celtic captain Callum McGregor has addressed Kris Boyd’s ridiculous comments about the Rangers players failing to test his face mask last week.
Boyd was left rattled after Celtic mauled the Ibrox club 3-0 at Parkhead. He wrote in his Scottish Sun column about McGregor that “the fact managed to get through the 90 minutes without anyone testing out that face mask is another story, but his commitment to the team was tremendous”. Boyd would then try and backtrack and state that he didn’t mean it literally [Scottish Sun].
The Daily Record would later report that Celtic were left unconvinced by Boyd’s excuse after a host of complaints were made to the club to tackle the issue. However, McGregor has today come out and stated he has had a chat with Boyd and that the matter has now been put to bed.
As quoted by Clyde 1’s Andrew MacLean on Twitter, McGregor said: “When you read it at first it doesn’t make great reading. Since then he has reached out, we’ve a chat about it and we’ll move on.
“He had realised it’s a poor choice of words and we put it to bed.”
Boyd was on punditry duties for Sky Sports on Sunday as he covered Celtic’s game at Fir Park, where the Hoops ran out convincing 4-0 winners.
Callum McGregor puts an end to Kris Boyd dispute, but Celtic should watch carefully
It sounds as though this matter is over. McGregor doesn’t appear to be taking too much offence to it, and evidently whatever chat he had with Boyd was enough for him to draw a line under it.
But Celtic really must be and undoubtedly will keeping an eye on what the former Rangers striker says about the club in the future. It was borderline dangerous at best from Boyd. You can say the game is in the past now or that it wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but Celtic have vital fixtures coming up. What’s to stop an opposition player from thinking that’s a good idea?
It’s totally reckless and goes against the nature and spirit of the game. Boyd really should’ve chosen his words better, and he can thank his lucky stars that McGregor has been forgiving over it.
You expect a lot better from one of Scottish football’s most high-profile pundits. Yes, it’s understandable when criticism might be over the top and passions running high after such a hammering in a Glasgow derby. But he should leave such violent rhetoric out of his columns in the future.
It will be interesting to see if Celtic do indeed decide to take this further as a club. Whether the likes of a stadium ban or anything come to fruition remains to be seen. But going by McGregor’s remarks, this is now over with.
All eyes then on Wednesday night when McGregor and co take on Aberdeen at Pittodrie. Hopefully Kris continues to enjoy Celtic’s free-flowing football with a bit more class and consideration in the future.
In other news, Celtic vs Raith Rovers the ideal time to finally welcome back Christopher Jullien
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