Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou spoke to the mainstream media yesterday and praised Celtic on their performance against a stubborn St Johnstone. The Perth side frustrated Celtic for large parts of the match but in the end succumbed to a great predatory goal from Greek striker Giorgios Giakoumakis and a wholly confident penalty from Croatian international Josip Juranovic.
As reported in the The Sun, the Australian said that the result and the level of performance was pleasing for him – even if he refused to be drawn into questions about Nick Walsh’s display as ref.
“It’s pleasing to win but what’s also pleasing is the way we are playing.
“We are keeping a consistent level of performance and we want to maintain that consistency.
“Our performances have been good in all the games since the break so from that point of view it’s pleasing but we have just got to keep going.”
Yesterday’s win was the fourth in a row for a Celtic side who are looking a more cohesive team with every passing week which will no doubt be striking fear into our SPFL rivals, especially with our often vilified defence now securing a run of clean sheets to prove their many doubters wrong.
It’s great to see that the likes of Carl Starfelt seem to be gaining a lot of confidence due to recent performances and hopefully it will put and end to both the media and even some of our own fans criticising every slight mistake.
In the most controversial moment of yesterday’s match, the home fans were angry at Saints frontman Chris Kane who was only shown a yellow card after a terrible reaction after he himself had fouled Cameron Carter-Vickers, who was also needlessly booked.
If you watch the situation back you will see fellow St Johnstone players put their head in their hands knowing he had just commited a red card offence. Referee Nick Walsh though ridiculously judged that both players were as guilty as each other brandishing yellow cards to both.
Regarding the issue Postcoglou said: “I thought the referee handled it okay – people run in and they push and shove.
“I always have a chuckle at these things because I’m not always sure how keen some of those on the outskirts are to get involved!
“I thought the referee handled it well. I couldn’t see why Cameron got the yellow card but I’m 50 yards away.”
Celtic also had a claim for a penalty when Jota went down under Saints keeper Zander Clark’s challenge, but Postecoglou said: “Again, I’m too far away.
“Over my years in management I have learned that you let those things go as much as you can.
“You can go down that rabbit hole and end up pulling your hair out. I try to let the officials handle these things.
“It’s important we don’t get frustrated at these kind of things because they can eat away at you and we need to focus on what is important to us.”
I think these comments from Ange are maybe both due to him still being relatively new to Scottish football and the fact that this was a game we ended up winning quite convincingly. If we had of dropped points in this match I’m not so sure Ange would have been in such a forgiving mood.
As Celtic fans we have become accustomed to watching refereeing bias towards us throughout the years. I have no doubt in my mind this will be far from the last ‘honest mistake’ made by officialdom this season towards us. This unfortunately is just the warm up Ange, get ready for it to click into overdrive the closer the title race becomes.
