Q: From a personal point of view as Celtic’s manager, how much do you think it will benefit you that you now have that first season under your belt and are immersed in Scottish Football and know the landscape of everything?
Ange Postecoglou: Considering no one thought I knew anything at the start of last year I think I am in a better place, mate, but I am well prepared as I always am.
Q: From your position, how much of a risk is it that Scottish Football now understands your tactics a bit better and how do you plan on always staying a step ahead of that?<
Ange Postecoglou: It depends on how closely they have been paying attention, my experience is they do not usually so that is the challenge for every football manager at every club. I have said it already that we need to be better than last year if we want to repeat the success. We cannot go out there and play to the levels we did last year.
It brought us a lot of success but we know we need to do better and if you can do that it does not guarantee success, but it gives you a good chance. We did not have a great pre-season last year, but we still managed to set down markers for what we wanted to achieve, and we did it. The message is no different this year. We have to prepare ourselves for a tough season with the full knowledge that people will try and stop us from achieving what we did last year so it is up to us to make sure that does not happen.
Q: There has been a lot of debate about Kyogo and Giakoumakis both vying for the starting position, do you see it like that or is it just good for squad rotation or could they perhaps play together? Also, how do you manage their expectations in terms of game time?
Ange Postecoglou: I do not look at it that way. My job is to build a team to try and achieve all the objectives that this football club has. This club plays between 55 and 60 games per year and wants to be successful in all competitions. You cannot do that with 11 players. I have stressed before that a limitation for us last year is that we were overburdening certain players in certain positions, and we paid the price because they missed huge parts of the season with injuries because we did not have the team or squad to cope with what is required at this football club. I do not have a first eleven or second eleven, I just have a group of 25 or 26 players who are available to do the job.
Q: Last season you barely had any time to work with the players before being thrown into the Champions League qualifiers, this season you have obviously had a lot more time to work with the players. Are there any players you have seen an improvement from in terms of being able to give more intensive coaching at this stage of the season?
Ange Postecoglou: To be fair to the players my role is to make sure they are better than they were last year. The majority of the players were not even here this time last year so the fact they are able to perform to consistent levels is a credit to themselves and a credit to the environment we created here. We gave them the opportunity to perform to really good levels even though most of them were thrown in with either no pre-season or no preparation sometimes.
My role now is to make sure that everyone performs at a better level and if people ask if the squad has been strengthened. We have to strengthen and it will be improved by us getting better levels of performance out of some of the players who I said last year were kind of literally thrown in and expected to perform at levels which will give us success. With all the boys we have noticed that since they have come in they have had the appetite to work hard and that is what you are looking for.
My radar is always up if there is any sort of complacency or people are taking things for granted whether that is staff or players. I have not seen any of that, I have a hungry group of people who enjoyed the success last year but they have come back looking for more and to see what the next layer is. My job is to make sure that the players can see that.
Q: How do you feel that after last season’s success the fans will be even more demanding this year?
Ange Postecoglou: We’ll just enjoy the ride, we had our ups and downs last year but we stuck together and as I always say it is how you feel when you get off the rollercoaster that is important. I’m sure it will be the same this year but hopefully, at the end the fans get off and say ‘that was a hell of a ride, let’s go again.
