Ange Postecoglou

Our performances have been gradually getting worse for quite some time now. Not sure if the players are running out of steam.

 

Needs to tweak something when it isn't working.

I love the guy but his "Do plan A better" attitude isn't going to cut it moving forward. Top managers adapt.

Very worrying performances recently.

 

Hard to fault him as we've won the games that matter..

But, we look miles away from bring competitive in the CL..

 

Ange Postecoglou in Celtic 'heavyweight champion' response to critics

Ange Postecoglou fired back at critics as Celtic failed to defeat St Mirren at Parkhead in the Scottish Premiership this afternoon.


The Hoops boss was far from pleased by his team's display as they shared the spoils with Stephen Robinson's side after losing to Rangers last weekend.

Curtis Main grabbed a double for the visitors, but goals from Kyogo Furuhashi and Callum McGregor ultimately earned the Scottish Champions a point.

Speaking to the BBC, Postecoglou responded to criticism aimed at his team. He said: “I don’t know. We are champions.



I get it that people are so obsessed. The heavyweight champion of the world does not have to win every round, but he holds the belt.

“We hold the belt. People can try and write narratives, but we play games of football with certain underlying principles because we want to enjoy it and we want our fans to enjoy it.

“We haven’t done that in the past couple of weeks but we all know if anyone looks at this team and sees anything other than a champion then they look at things that have been.”

“I think the loss of Cameron Carter-Vickers is evident. You are bringing guys in, is it maybe just a lack of game time?”

Postecoglou was also asked if Cameron Carter-Vickers was a big miss, given he has mixed his defensive line since the American played his final game of the season in the Scottish Cup semi-final against Rangers.

He continued: “Oh look, I guarantee 1000 per cent it is not one player. It has nothing to do with Cameron Carter-Vickers.

“We have missed Cameron Carter-Vickers before, we played Champions League football without Cameron Carter-Vickers.

“That is the easy thing to look at but that is not how we view things.

“Like I said we are not working as hard off the ball as we were prior to winning the title and when you don’t that’s what happens.



You can’t dominate games of football playing like we did. We pride ourselves on being relentless and you can’t just be relentless when you have the ball.

“For us it is actually more important when we don’t have it and we haven’t been the last couple of weeks.”

Postecoglou added: “Yeah it is natural and for some of them it probably is the case, but you still have games of football to play.

“What do you do? If that is your attitude going into games you will struggle.

“The whole thing we do is not to be reactive to what is happening around the field or reactive to circumstances.

“We want to be consistent in what we do and that is the only way we can play our football.

“If we don’t then like I said it becomes a struggle for us.”

 

Yep. A scary prospect right now..

I hope he's true to his word about no getting attached to players and no sentimentality and we rip a few out of this and a load of fringe guys. We need proper quality in now and there's zero excuse for no doing it..

We still lack pace all over the side for how we want to play. Our backup options aren't up to scratch either..

At fullback today it is so slow and one paced
Our keeper is painfully immobile in all of his movements
O'Riley is as stiff as it gets
Jota isn't that quick

We need more quality with athleticism and some physicality..

He must realise this..

 

Once again find myself wondering what is so unthinkable about having different systems for different situations. When things are going well am all for sticking to our principles (as Ange calls it), but when we're getting bullied off big bruisers and can't seem to click with the free flowing stuff, it * me off to * we refuse to change it up.

Obviously doesn't diminish my love for the big man, and still think he's the perfect manager for us, but I wish to * he would have something different up his sleeve.

It's the only thing I have ever had a problem with when it comes to Ange, and it will always resurface for as long as he's here, because we know for a fact he won't budge in it. * infuriating.

 

His transfer policy has been tremendous, must be something like a 70% success rate which is incredible, but some of it is absolutely weird. I know he massively values character and leaders and that alone has bailed us out of some tight spots but he needs to try and strike a balance between character, ability, physicality and how they fit into his system in the Summer for us to go up a couple of notches and properly have a go in Europe.

No more slow, weak centre backs when we play a high line constantly or left backs that still don't know how to invert into midfield after 6 months or pass the ball 10 yards.

If he gets that right...we'll be flying.

 

We need a couple of big guys. I think we also missed AJ. Players like that don't get bullied.

 

Looks * and understandably so. Not much he can do about it now given the circumstances.
He needs to pick and motivate a team for one last push for the Cup.

 

A centre back and a keeper need to be top of the list it's becoming glaringly obvious

 

Ok it was a * game but man does he know the right things to say afterwards

 

Only thing I'll say is this, we won pretty much every game that mattered domestically, and if we were ever going to have bad games, now is the best time. League is won and it tells us what we need to improve in the summer.

Before these last few games, a lot of us thought the likes of Kobayashi, Bernabei (Less so but still) and Oh were good enough to be our main backups next season, and that the likes of Hart/O'Riley are good enough to start. We now know that none of that is the case (Oh will come good, but he shouldn't be our backup)

There's also a further inkling that the likes of Taylor and Maeda are perhaps no longer 100% safe in their positions. Still excellent players who offer us a lot, but you could see us bring others in to properly compete with, and eventually replace, them.

Get Inverness out the way, and I'll look forward to what I expect to be a productive summer.

 

I don't know if there's any need for soul-searching here. The league's won, we've a few lads out, and our first-team players are phoning it in. It's not an ideal situation and you'd like to see Ange keeping them motivated but I don't think it really signals anything about the CL or next season.

 

The Big fella aint coming back to Melbourne anytime soon. Toorak house on the market $3.5m

 

Main thing that worries me with our performances over last month (or longer even ) is that they might be signs of stagnation which could carry into next season if we don't refresh the squad properly enough in the summer. And to me when teams begin to stagnate its usually in the 3rd season, similar to rodgers time here you could see signs in the 2nd season and it got worse in the 3rd.
Could be reading to much into but even before the league was wrapped up I don't think our pressing has been as intense or passing as fluid as it has been before.

 

The league is done and players are clearly not as focused as they would be normally. As long as we turn up in the final I don’t particularly care about the remaining league fixtures.

 

Stagnation will happen, Rodgers didn't recruit well enough to stop that was a big issue. Players become comfortable, teams start to plan better against you. I think it can be easy for players to be comfortable at our club. I do think as a team we need to have more variations on how we play. A 4th choice CB should probably be a tough hard git, they don't have to be great but I think it would have stopped St Mirren yesterday.

 

That's why we will sell a right few in the summer.

Kyogo, hatate. Abada and turnbull plus all the loan players won't be here next season

 

No offense, but you were pretty adamant Gyu-seong Jo would come to us in January, and he didn't come. I am hoping you're wrong here as well.