It doesn’t paint the prettiest of pictures of life at Celtic under the previous regime, indeed it makes you ever more thankful that Ange Postecoglou and his methods, whether by luck or by design, found their way to Celtic.
As reported in Daily Record today former Celt and top prospect Leo Hjelde made the summer move Marcelo to Bielsa’s Leeds team, just as 12 others were heading in the opposite direction. The stylish defender only briefly touched upon Celtic’s revolution under Ange, but it is clear there were some residual issues from the previous regime that needed sorted out once he’d been assessed by the meticulous Bielsa.
“I was told that I had to lose a few kilos to become a Premier League player. You have weight goals, so I was told to lose a few kilos to be at the weight they wanted.
“At Celtic I was told that I was too light. I ate a little more, and the workouts were nowhere near as hard. It was a shock to come from Scotland. It is a completely different level here. I have received good backing from the club and the players around me.
“There is a lot of running. Training is brutal at times.”
When asked about the toughest physical challenge he’d encountered under the disciplinarian Bielsa, even the title of the session is enough to make you sweat:
“It was probably a ‘murderball’ training session. I remember I played against Patrick Bamford and was tired after two minutes. And then there was half-an-hour left.”
Leo Hjelde has had to bide his time for first team Premier League action at Leeds but after an FA Cup debut, Hjelde was thrown into action in Leeds 3-2 win against West Ham yesterday after injuries to Junior Firpo and Adam Forshaw:
“Everything happened very fast. There were two players who went down and then I was told to go out and warm up. When I realised I was going in, my heart was pounding.”
Within a couple of hours and a Jack Harrison hat-trick to boot, Hjelde and his Leeds United team were celebrating a League debut to remember.
It’s not uncommon for former players to cover their own inadequacies by putting the boot into Celtic, however for Leo Hjelde there is no such agenda. His comments on the previous training regime have been rumoured elsewhere and the player was in no way shouldering any blame in any case for the disastrous season he left behind.
Under Ange Postecoglou things may have been different for Leo Hjelde. The team after all look far fitter and the demands made on them more in keeping with a top-level football club, but Hjelde clearly wanted to challenge himself to see if he could cut it in the Premier league, and with the Postecoglou revolution ticking along quite nicely without Helde’s involvement it shows there are no cause for regrets now on either side. However, his assessment shows just how lucky we are to have someone like Ange Postecoglou cracking the whip, as it appears from Hjede’s comments that standards weren’t always quite so high.
Niall J
Hmmm – by all accounts Hjelde was a real prospect so his perspective under Lennon is interesting though just adds to the general consensus that Lennon was a disaster in his final spell for whatever reason … but he wasn’t the only one. Rumour has it that he didn’t do much, if any, coaching so where did his so-called assistant manager, Kennedy, fit into the disastrous picture & how much blame lies with him? Many fans are mystified how he has managed to stay with the club after being part of both the Deila & Lennon failures. It’s obvious that Ange had no say in Kennedys appointment as assistant manager once again & that is a concern though, hopefully, Ange won’t come to regret accepting it.