Current Celtic coaches John Kennedy and Gavin Strachan will be given a chance to work under Ange Postecoglou but there are so far no guarantees that this will be the long-term solution that that new Celtic manager’s coaching needs. It does however look encouraging for the pair who endured a difficult season together last year firstly working under Neil Lennon and towards the end of a campaign to forget with Kennedy acting as the club’s Interim boss.
“If you look at my history, I’ve usually ended up working with people who already exist within the club. Why would I dispense with valuable knowledge or experience?,” Postecoglou asked yesterday, in reply to a question on the pair’s future at the club given his own appointment.
“This club has had a great deal of success in recent times, but again, I’m prepared to look wherever it may be to make sure I have the best people. That’s all I’ve ever done.
“I love to know everything and I love to control everything, but what I’ve learnt over time is that if you get the best people around you, all those kinds of things take care of themselves.
“Whoever that person may be, they may be inside the club they may be outside the club, they’ll be around if they can help us.”
And on whether he expects Celtic to appoint a Director of Football and if that does happen what his opinion on it would be, the new gaffer was just as forthcoming with his answer, pragmatic and prepared to work with people who can help bring success to the club under his regime.
“I am hands on and I want to do everything, but what I’ve learnt in my 25 years is that you can’t,” Ange said. “I’m pretty good at surrounding myself with the best people, whatever area that may be.
“The one thing that hasn’t changed over the 25 years is that I still have a limited amount of time at my disposal, that hasn’t changed. I know the demands of this job, and I’m going to make sure I have the best people around me in all areas.
“The club’s been supportive about that, whether that’s a director of football, a sporting director, sports science, we’ll make the best decisions to support the environment that I know we need to have to be successful.
“Coming from football on that side of the world, where people don’t rate it very highly, I can tell you in terms of high performance environments we’re as good as anyone. We have to be, because our football isn’t as good.
“So, I’ll be bringing that here as well as the football element.”
Don’t be surprised if the team Postecoglou worked with in Australia aren’t Glasgow bound over the summer.
