ALEX’S ANGLE: BELT UP, BRENDAN

SO, WE DISCOVER today that Brendan Rodgers is apparently lining up “a stunning bid to lure Celtic captain Callum McGregor to Saudi Arabia”.

The club’s former manager wants to tempt the champions’ onfield leader to his new team Al Qadsiah, according to a report in the Scottish Sun.

Rodgers may be better served trying to sell sand to the Arabs than making moves to reunite with McGregor in the Middle East.

It must be said the one-time supremo’s timing recently hasn’t quite been spot on. In late October, he called for a meeting with the board that eventually saw him vamoose out of Glasgow for a second time.

He didn’t go into that particular gathering of minds from a position of strength having lost back-to-back Premiership games against Dundee at Dens Park and Hearts at Tynecastle. If he believed anyone among the club’s hierarchy was about to try to talk him out of resigning, clearly he was very wrong.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS…Celtic captain Callum McGregor and Brendan Rodgers hold aloft the League Cup at Hampden a year ago.

Likewise his interest – if the story is accurate, of course – on this occasion will be welcomed as much as an outbreak of cholera.

Maybe Brendan hasn’t been catching up with all things Celtic, but the team are experiencing turbulence at the moment having lost four games on the spin since the introduction of Wilfried Nancy as his long-term successor.

Clearly, an influential and experienced campaigner such as McGregor will be viewed as a vitally important component around the place during troubled times.

Attempting to remove the skipper or unsettling the player will not draw applause from anyone with Celtic’s interests at heart.

Rodgers, you may have noticed, didn’t exactly make a clean break in his second hasty farewell and provoked a stinging rebuke from Dermot Desmond, the club’s principal shareholder, that he had been “divisive, misleading and self-serving” as disharmony spread on and off the field.

Presumably, Brendan didn’t request a reference from the double billionaire when he went in search of employment in another corner of the planet.

Of course, Rodgers also attempted to sign McGregor, who is under contract until June 2028, for Leicester City after skedaddling out of the city in the first instance in February 2019.

He wasn’t successful then and he will face similar rejection this time around.

A RARE SIGHTING…Michel-Ange Balikwisha in action against Kilmarnock in mid-September.

If Rodgers is keen on buying some of his former Hoops players he may want to think about Sebastian Tounekti or Michel-Ange Balikwisha, two players he brought to the club for a joint £9.7million in the summer.

Swansea City may even consider selling Adam Idah, the striker the ex-gaffer thought was worth £9.5million in the summer of 2024.

According to Desmond: “Every player signed and every player sold during his tenure was done so with Brendan’s full knowledge, approval and endorsement. Any insinuation otherwise is absolutely false.

“In reality, he was given final say over all football matters and was consistently backed in the recruitment process — including record investment in players he personally identified and approved.”

Possibly, Rodgers might want to make moves for either Tounekti or Balikwisha – or both – and he could just find his former club more receptive to haggling over prices for the pair rather than discuss the captain.

Otherwise, he would be well advised to belt up and let Celtic get on with taking care of business while 32-year-old McGregor, winner of 24 honours in 11 years, concentrates on turning around the fortunes of the team during a crucial period.