Ange Postecoglou insists Celtic’s Premiership title pursuit won’t come at the cost of their Scottish Cup and treble ambitions.
The Hoops boss is adamant nothing less than full focus will be on Monday night’s quarter-final clash against Dundee United at Tannadice despite an ongoing league dogfight with Rangers.
With the League Cup already in the Parkhead trophy cabinet and a three point lead over their Old Firm rivals going into the season’s finale, Postecoglou believes fighting on all fronts is the priority and not a distraction.
He said: “It’s definitely not lost on us that there’s a cup to win. Obviously the league has been the focus for the last few weeks but we are more than well aware that we’re deep into a cup now and a few games away from hopefully contesting for another trophy.
“We’re definitely focused in on that, knowing that Monday night is going to be a good challenge for us against a good side away from home.
“Cup games always have a little bit of edge to them. They are always more exciting so I’m looking forward to it.”
Celtic’s elimination from the Europa Conference League has eased their fixture congestion and Postecoglou admits it’ll allow for more training ground fine-tuning which hasn’t been a luxury he’s enjoyed during a three-game-a-week schedule.
He said: “It just gives you a chance within your training context that you can’t when you have a lot of games.
“When we gave feedback to players it meant we had to do that through video analysis rather than on the pitch, whereas now having no midweek game allows you to work on some things on the pitch.
“It means you can work at a higher intensity than you normally would because the players have recovered from the previous game.
“You’ve still got time until the next game, so you can raise the levels of everything.
“That doesn’t always translate into performance, because sometimes players get into a rhythm of playing every three days and they go through that really well, and not having a game could flatten them out.”
“You’ve got to make sure that you try to keep them as sharp as possible.
“The good thing from my perspective as a manager is that when I look out on the training track, we’ve got 22 or 24 guys who are training at the highest possible level because they all want to play, they all want to be a part of it.
“It’s really competitive, so that means that even though we haven’t got a game, it doesn’t mean the players are relaxing at all.
“If anything, the intensity has been raised a bit.”
There was positive news for Postecoglou as he prepares to welcome back playmaker David Turnbull back into his first team plans after the Scotland midfielder was sidelined with a hamstring injury picked up in the League Cup Final win over Hibs in December.
He said: “He’s back in training, not with the main group yet. We are hoping that early next week, probably after this game, he should be back with the main group.”
