Matt (O’Riley) was talking about Callum being inspiring and playing through a significant injury is that what you want to see from your captain? I don’t think it is what I want to see. I don’t want anybody hurt and trying to prove their character in that manner. It is a testament to him as a person that he had it in his mind that if everything checked out from a medical point of view that he wanted to be out there.
He knew it was important and he was one of the few that had experienced that big game atmosphere particularly in a derby and without him there we would have lacked a little bit of that experience. He didn’t prove anything to me or anyone else the other night because we already know what an outstanding person he was. It is a testament to him that he not only got out there but he actually played really well and drove us in big moments and that is inspiring to everybody.
On the theme of a level, how much do you look at the statistics that you’re players are showing up? When we analyse our performance and that’s what we do we do not analyse the result. Everybody knows the result and you win, lose or draw. When you analyse performance you delve pretty deep into individuals and how they perform against other benchmarks from this season. Whether that be physical or tactical. There is a lot of data out there and we have some key ones that we look at.
Whenever we hit a new sort of level, I don’t see it as a peak, I see it as a stepping stone to going to another higher level. We feed this information back to the players because it shows them what they are capable of particularly if they have hit a new sort of mark. My view has always been to coach a team to peak at the end of the season.
Traditionally that has always been how my teams have been set up. In terms of our playing model, my history in football was in Australia where to be a champion you had to win a grand final at the end of the season so you had to be playing your best football then. I have maintained that throughout my career because that for the most part things get decided. In an ideal world we would be playing our best football by the turn of the year but due to injuries and absences that have not been possible. We give our feedback to the players every week on a number of fronts in terms of their progress and potential to improve.
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You can see the players improving but there is still more to go considering that first-half performance against (the)Rangers? That is the whole point going into a game like that. If you put a limit on what you can achieve or how you can play then you potentially miss the opportunity to create new levels of performance. So we go into every game whether that’s Wednesday night or Sunday with the main objective to be to play our best game of the season. Let’s play better than we have played so far.
You are not thinking about what you did last game and you don’t want to repeat that you want to improve on it. It does not always work out that way and sometimes there is a dip in form and sometimes the opposition can stop you from playing at those levels but the intent is always to improve. Matt O’Riley is three/four games into his Celtic career as is Reo Hatate and Giorgos Giakoumakis. The rest have been here for five or six months of the beginning of a new cycle and new way of playing and there has to be an improvement. If we want to achieve and be the team we want to be we have to improve. If we want to be successful we have to bed better than we were the other night.
You said after beating (the)Rangers that don’t look at the table and you won’t look at it now are the players as focused as you are? It’s not about not looking at the table…as I do. I don’t let that guide me in the feedback I give to the players or guide my mood or guide my attitude about what is ahead. The goal was never just to get to the top spot. If you do that then what do you do next? What is the next level for the players? We haven’t spoken about being on top of the league or having a certain amount of points.
What we have spoken about every week is being the best team we can be and trying to improve and when the trophies are handed out we are in there. Being in the first place is a sign of our progression and it is part of the narrative because if we weren’t going well then we would not be in this position. It is not the endpoint. Nothing changes because that has happened.
Looking ahead to Motherwell and they have not managed a win since the resumption after the break, Fir Park is a notoriously tough place to go, I assume that is what you expect? Every game from now on will be a challenge for all teams. Everyone is fighting for something and particularly away from home in the Premiership. There are challenges every week and we’ve tried to after the first five or six games be as resilient as we can to overcome whatever challenge we’ve faced. The Dundee United game when we were at home and their form wasn’t great either and everybody expected a comfortable afternoon but it wasn’t.
That is what you go into every week home or away you know it is going to be tough. That is the measure of every team. The measure of every boxer is not just the punches you throw, it is about the punches you take and how you react to that and we’ve been hit a fair few times but credit to the players as we haven’t gone down as we have got ourselves back into the ring and started swinging again. It will be a tough one but we expect every game to be tough.
