With the disappointment of Celtic’s Conference League campaign being over before it had a proper chance to get underway, Ange Postecoglou was back at Lennoxtown yesterday looking on the bright side of the defeat to Bodo/Glimt that has effectively meant that his over-worked and over-played Celtic squad will have tow free midweeks in a row and that will give them time to do what’s appropriate for each player given his own circumstances in terms of work on the training ground.
Celtic have played 14 games this year since coming back from the short winter break to play Hibs at Celtic Park. The team have dropped just two points in the league – away to Hibs the weekend before last and have seen a six point deficit on theRangers turn into a three points lead with a better goal difference of +11 thrown in to boot. Scottish Cup progress has been made with an away win over Alloa Athletic and a home victory over Raith Rovers. The only two defeats came against the Norwegian Champions that brought Celtic’s roller-coaster of a European journey to a close for the season. You get the feeling that this is unfinished business for Ange Postecoglou and he will be desperate to make an impact on the European stage with Celtic next season.
Speaking to Daily Record the Celtic Manager was back at work yesterday and was busy explaining that the players won’t be getting days off but instead will get some long overdue time to work on the training ground at Lennoxtown, with the play, recovery, light training and play again routine being broken for the next few weeks. This is Celtic’s silver lining from the failed Arctic Circle adventure.
“It’s not about days off, it’s just about freshening them a bit. The players will still be in at Lennoxtown but they will come in with a different mindset. When you know there is a game coming up in midweek, you tend to just work on recovery. It’ll be great for the players to just train as normal as this is the first free midweek we’ve had all year,” Ange explained.
“It allows them to freshen up mentally instead of preparing for a game in the midweek. I will freshen up a few and I’ll also get the chance to put some real good physical work into others who need it.
“The ones who haven’t had a lot of game time recently. It’ll be enormously beneficial for us to have two midweeks coming up. It’s eight days between Livingston and the cup game on Monday (at Tannadice against Dundee United) and then we don’t play again until the weekend (at Celtic Park against Ross County).
“That’s two good weeks of training before the international break and that is valuable time for us as coaches as we can actually do some work with the players,” the Celtic Manager added.
Ange Postecoglou appreciates fully the job that the players he has assembled over the past eight months have done in circumstances that describing as difficult doesn’t do justice. Of course his focus is on what the players themselves have achieved and he overlooks the job that he himself has done – no-one in the Celtic support is doing that however!
“I have total admiration for the way the players have kept going physically during a really tough run of games. This team deserves great credit. We will see how the season unfolds in the end, but all of our players have embraced the challenges we have faced from the start of the season.
“We had guys coming in without a pre-season with us. Others didn’t have a pre-season at all. It was a case of arriving and getting on the pitch. Daizen, Reo and Yosuke came in with just a couple of weeks off after playing the season in Japan.
“They went straight in and played a lot of football. Matty went from League One in England, straight into Premiership football up here and adapted. Callum is another one who has really put himself out there for the team.
“You talk about the challenges, the pressure and the intensity at Celtic, but it’s a credit to these guys that they have faced everything this year. I’m sure they will face more, but the way they have dealt with pressure and adversity, without making excuses, is great.
“When things haven’t gone well, they haven’t made excuses and haven’t wanted me to make excuses. They’ve accepted responsibility for everything and it’s a credit to a new group of players who were literally thrown together in the last eight months. I have great admiration for the way they’ve dealt with things.”
Celtic have more home games than away before the split (2/1) while theRangers have the reverse with their home being against Celtic. Post split it should also be the case that Celtic have three homes matches and two away games and again theRangers should have three away games and only two at Ibrox. It’s likely that one of Celtic’s away matches will be a third visit to Livingston but with that monkey off our backs after the impressive 3-1 win at the Tony Macaroni at the weekend then that’s a less daunting challenge that we’d have previously thought.
What a job Ange Postecoglou has done. This time last year theRangers were already conformed Scottish Champions for the first time in their history and on their way to a 25 points gap by the end of the campaign.
Incidentally there were rumours doing the rounds yesterday that there will be no away end tickets For Celtic Fans for the game at Ibrox and Etims.net have written about this in their Diary this morning. We actually checked this rumour out yesterday afternoon with the Celtic SLO John Paul Taylor telling us: “No decision been taken on it yet as far as I’m aware.”
