Ange Postecoglou

In the immediate aftermath of last week’s thrilling derby win at Paradise, Ange Postecoglou spoke about what the result meant to every Celtic supporter.

He said, ‘We had 60,000 in. I’m sure a lot of them walked in with problems in their life. Tonight we made them forget that for a while, and that’s something special.’

For the Australian, the role of Celtic manager is a privileged one which comes with a lot of responsibilities. One of the primary ones is in meeting the expectations of the fans for whom, football is more than just a game and Celtic is more than just a club.

As a fan of the beautiful game, Ange Postecoglou understands that, and he wants his team to deliver success to the supporters, playing a brand of football that they will enjoy and enthuse about.

That’s what happened last Wednesday night in the Glasgow derby, and that’s what fans are anticipating more of.

Speaking at Lennoxtown today, the Celtic manager explained: “What I’ve said is that I need people to believe in me because I’ve got a massive responsibility.

'I’m not just manager of a football club. I’m manager of everything that football club embodies, and this is a club that’s had really strong values, a really strong identity and a lot of success since 1888.'

“So it was important for me that the people who are truly invested in this club, and that’s the supporters, believed in me as a person more than anything else, because we’ve all been around long enough to know there’s no guarantee of success, there’s no way you can go out there and say, listen, we’ll definitely going to create something special.

“But I think when people believe in you as a person, you’re more likely to get understanding of what you’re trying to achieve and, for me, obviously the first part was the players and the staff here, to get them to believe in me, and then the supporters who are important.

“I keep saying, I’m not there yet because I’ve not yet delivered what I want to deliver to the football club, and until I do, then I feel like it’s more me still trying to get our supporters to really believe and entrust in me the responsibility of steering this football club forward.”



The 3-0 derby win was followed up by another impressive performance at the weekend, when the Hoops beat Motherwell 4-0 at Fir Park. And next up for Celtic is a trip to Pittodrie to take on Aberdeen this Wednesday night.

“My point after the derby game is that we’ve gone through a period of time over the last 18 months to two years where, because of the circumstances the world’s been in, in terms of the pandemic, where we’ve almost separated the game from its supporters,” the Celtic boss said.

'And whilst at the beginning I think it was done for the right reasons, after a while it’s almost like we forgot that, really, the game without supporters is nothing because no-one wants to watch games in an empty stadium.'

“That game the other night – obviously it was great for us and not great for Rangers, I get that, but if that was in an empty stadium, you wouldn’t have had, without that atmosphere and that special connection, you wouldn’t have people talking about it, whether they’re Celtic supporters or not.

“And that was my point – that’s what football clubs are. They’re more than just sporting clubs and sometimes I think, particularly when l listen to politicians talk, or people in power, they don’t understand the investment people have in their football club, that sometimes their whole week’s mood is judged by how their team goes.

“For some people, that’s hard to conceptualize, but that’s how much it means to some people. We bear that responsibility, I bear that responsibility, so I guess that’s where the essence of what I was trying to explain after the game comes from.”

 

This was my first post in the thread, suprised I was so equivocal about him.

He certainly got the team all headed in the right direction quicker than I hoped, and there doesn't seem to have been any pushback - except maybe from those who are now gone.

 

And here’s my first.
I think it’s fair to say you’ve all been pleasantly surprised

 

I was negative about Ange coming as i don’t trust the board, read back some old comments and found one from “albootyerbaws” was * hilarious

Guess its funny to look back on now

 

Stuck up for him from the off. * the lot of you

 

A broken man back then, too broken to even care who came in.

 

Had a skim read through myself, I’m not sure there’s enough humble pie available in Scotland One of the admins in particular needs a semitrailer’s worth of that pie

It’s all water under the bridge and was more a laugh when I read through it. What does seem to have happened is there appears to be quite a few posts missing/deleted(or possibly on another thread somewhere). I’m sure my first post is missing

Anyhow, let the good times roll

 

Ange Postecoglou fires “how sad your life is” quip over remarkable Celtic statistic

It can be presumed Ange Postecoglou isn’t the most prodigious social media user.

The Celtic manager missed the fine research from some club aficionados that had Twitter ablaze over the remarkable fact his team have only been behind for one minute – in December’s League Cup final triumph – across their past 1,350 minutes of football. The 56-year-old doesn’t shy away from stating a belief the sequence reflects unrelenting standards across a 15-game unbeaten run in all competitions, which has produced 14 wins ahead of the cinch Premiership leaders’ trip to Aberdeen on Wednesday. In his typically joshing fashion, though, Postecoglou also considered the number-crunching revealed something else.

“I don’t know how sad your life is to be looking up stats like that, mate,” he said affectionately. “Look, I think it is an indication of our form over the last couple of months – possibly longer, to be honest. I think the key thing for us is not to get too sidetracked about what’s happened in the past. We’ve been really good at focusing on our next challenge and making sure we are at our best. I think when you do that your performance level doesn’t drop, if anything it keeps improving. Then you are really putting pressure on your opponents. Among all players, all teams, there is the propensity to have an off day, or a day when you are not at it. We haven’t had any of those. Even the games that have been tight, I still think we have given a good account of ourselves. To have been able to maintain that gives you those kind of statistics.”

As a manager who prides himself in a possession-based approach, Postecoglou doesn’t downplay the significance of the fact that across the 42 games he has helmed Celtic, in only five have his team not been credited with dominating the ball. “[To have played 42 games] is very demanding,” the Celtic manager said. “We struggled with a lot of those in the early part of the year but the team’s grown in belief and confidence. You have the obvious markers of winning games and where you are on the ladder, but the underlying stuff like possession is very important too.”

 

First comment, quite happy with that. Now we're all in the Ange cult

 

O'Riley's an interesting one. You mention a potential £30 million figure and no doubt he's been great so far, but Premier League clubs could have signed him for just £1.5 million a month ago. There's no question that every PL club's scouting/recruitment department would have been aware of him, yet it was us and a few Championship clubs reportedly in for him. Not that I'm complaining mind you. He's been an absolute steal. It's just interesting that nobody from that league went in for him, especially when all his creative stats and metrics were apparently off the charts.

I wonder if it's his physical profile that put clubs off? You don't see too many 8's or 10's in the Premier League who are his height and not particularly quick, similar to Rogic. Ah well, their loss is our gain.

 

Or it’s maybe a case that him and his agent were sounded out and he wasn’t happy with either 1. Their style of football or 2. The knowledge that he wouldn’t be getting much game time

 

Somebody did mention that a few years back he was linked with Dortmund and Juventus. Lucky us!

 

Could say the same for Van Dijk

 

Could be absolutely anything. Agent could have told the scouts, no play and you don’t get him. Think Matt would be loathe to go to a Premier League club until he’s established, particularly after being in the Fulham academy, I mean at the end of the day he would have stayed at Fulham if that’s what he wanted.

Celtic have a good history of its best players heading south and straight into the team, once they’ve proven themselves in Scotland and Europe. I think that would have been a major attraction.

With regards to Rogic, even here we’ve seen how much he struggles or thrives depending on the manager’s style. I think he would have flopped in a defensive lower level team, such as Burnley, but on the flip side thrived at an Arsenal or the like. Just the nature of the beast, and besides, he loves it at Celtic. TF Lennon didn’t sell him for peanuts.

 

An earlier comment about market value of new players is an interesting one...
While I have no idea how much these players might be worth, it does seem that we got them at bargain basement prices based on what we have already seen of their quality.

What is also interesting I think is that it is likely existing players will have also increased their value on the transfer market as well. Ange seems to have had a positive impact on improving the way several existing players are playing - Rogic, Ralston, Bitton and Taylor all come to mind. My guess is that all of these are more valuable players on the transfer market now than they were last year, since they have been showcased in their right roles and in a team playing dynamic football. Not that I want to sell any of them right now!

 

Mate you were spot on, well done (although he's certainly got things going faster than even the most optimistic of us hoped).

Shows that there was some substance to the support some were giving him!

I was lucky enough to witness what he did at the Roar first hand. The gall to dump Craig Moore so that he could instil a more youthful, quicker system was unheard of in Aussie football at the time.

I thought he may struggle to do that at Celtic, but once again he's overhauled the squad in no short order and it's paying dividends. Amazing and there must be a secret sauce there

 

You'd have to say CalMac is worth double what he was a year ago.