Ange Postcoglou’s transfer plea even more telling after dour draw in Paisley

Celtic’s disastrous 0-0 draw with St Mirren on Wednesday evening has very much landed at the feet of the board as opposed to any of the coaching staff. And with comments made by Ange Postecoglou earlier in the week, it has become obvious with tonight’s result that the Aussie requires numbers if he is to exert his tactical excellence.

The game saw Owen Moffat make his first start for the club, and although he evidently had no say in his introduction, the winger largely struggled.

Jota, Kyogo, David Turnbull and more were missing as the Celts lacked the firepower to see themselves over the line.

And Postecoglou’s previous comments will now alert the board that more signings are needed in the winter window.

“It’s not bad luck,” Postecoglou recently said to the Herald.

“We’re playing too many games. People can talk about it as much as they want, but because we don’t have the squad to rotate players at the moment we are paying the price. 

“And we are playing a certain brand of football that puts pressure on players.”

It is quite a telling indictment that Ange has yet to finish even half of his rebuild at the club. There is a sense that as a group, his players have come on leaps and bounds in the last few weeks even, never mind the last few months.

But that must – and I stress must – be replenished with further squad depth if the club are to win a league title in the near future.

“Since the last break we are going to have I think 13 games in the space of maybe six weeks. No other club has that by the way. So that is going to have an attrition, particularly when we are talking about having a limited squad and limited options,” Postecoglou continued.

“David Turnbull hasn’t missed a game so I don’t think it takes too much investigation to understand that his body is fatigued. We are paying the price for that at the moment.

“It’s not that it’s a price I’m willing to pay, because I don’t want players to get injured, but I didn’t want to compromise our football and take the foot off the pedal because I knew there were going to be this many games. I just figured ‘well let’s just go for it’ and we hope to hang on until the break.

“My players aren’t holding back and it’s the only reason we are being successful at the moment. You can’t hold back. It’s all-in or nothing and I’ve said that to them from day one whether it’s training or playing, you’ve got to be totally into this.”