Celtic’s Scott Brown came up against his would-be successor again on Saturday.

Tam McManus has claimed on Twitter that John McGinn is the ideal long-term replacement for Scott Brown at Celtic, adding that the Hibernian star is a level above Olivier Ntcham at the moment.
Celtic beat Neil Lennon’s side 1-0 at Parkhead on Saturday, courtesy of Leigh Griffiths’s 27th-minute winner.
Familiar subplots re-surface when the Hoops meet their Edinburgh rivals and that is whether McGinn is capable of taking up the mantle from Brown when the legendary midfielder – who turns 33 in June – calls it a day.

Historically, McGinn tends to perform well in clashes with Celtic and the 23-year-old maintained that standard with another decent display in spite of Saturday’s defeat.
And BBC pundit McManus, who spent eight years at Easter Road until 2005, says that McGinn is the perfect man to take over from Brown – a £4.4 million signing from Hibs in 2007, as per The Guardian – one day.

As Celtic fans have pointed out, Ntcham is rapidly improving under Brendan Rodgers and it seems like the warm-weather training camp in Dubai did wonders for him.
The French midfielder has looked a different player these past couple of weeks in comparison to before the New Year and Rodgers must be delighted with him.
As Brown showed, though, there is plenty of life left in the old dog yet and as much as these fixtures tend to throw up the same talking points in relation to McGinn, the Bhoys captain usually proves that it’s premature to ask who should take over from him.
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