“There’s an alignment of the vision that we have as a football club and the vision our supporters have for us”

A point we’ve repeatedly made is the way in which Ange Postecoglou treats the questions from The Celtic fan media differently from those that come before at his pre-match media conferences which come from the mainstream broadcast media.

On Friday there was a perfect example of this with an interesting Celtic fan media question and an insightful answer from the manager. The latter only came about because of the former yet The Celtic supporter asking the question ends up complaining about the hate received as a result from trolls. If any of them think that they an do better, get in touch as we’ll give you our next spot talking to Ange, which incidentally is after the game at Celtic Park against theRangers next month!

Ange was asked about building a relationship with the Celtic support and whether it’s something he emphasises behind-the-scenes with players or if the relationship we see is just a natural by-product of the way they go about their business.

The manager’s response was spot on, as usual. “It’s a little bit of both. I’m not one to force these things. People figured out pretty quickly I wasn’t going to tell our supporters how they should feel about us and our performances and I certainly don’t tell the players how they should feel about our support.

“The perfect scenario is, as you said, there’s a synergy there. Both are working as one and understand. From my perspective, I think I had the clearest indications really early on that the supporters, whilst very demanding in terms of the success, they are also pretty clear about what they want to see when their football team plays.

“I think they saw that fairly early on in my tenure. Albeit our results weren’t always there, but just the way we were trying to play our football. I think the players brought to the club, there was certainly an acknowledgement from the supporters that ‘okay, we’ll give you a little bit of time for results but at least we can see that what you’re saying is you’re endeavouring to build.’

“Obviously my role after that was I’ve got to bring the results as well.

“From there it has grown. You can see that in the way the players respond to our supporters and the way the supporters respond to the players. The game-day experience now is that everyone is rowing the same way. Whether things are going really well for us on the field or there’s a period in the game there might be a grind, you get the sense the supporters and the players are understanding that if we stick the things that are important to us, we’ll find our way through.

“I think you sensed that on Sunday, through the patch where we hand to grind things out. We did that and our supporters were right behind us through that time. That sort of thing needs to happen naturally and it happens naturally when there’s an alignment of the vision that we have as a football club and the vision our supporters have for us.”

As mentioned above The Celtic Fan media questions come at the end of the media conferences and you can listen to this exchange below…