TELEVISION audiences in the UK used to love a good old Australian soap opera, but it seems that the feeling isn’t entirely reciprocated. At least, not from Ange Postecoglou’s point of view.
The Celtic manager was entirely unmoved by comments from his former player Josip Juranovic this week, who admitted that he was ‘sad’ that the club hadn’t tried harder to keep him in Glasgow ahead of his January move to Union Berlin.
While Postecoglou wishes Juranovic well, his response to the full-back’s complaints evoked memories of his famous retort about where Michael Beale’s appointment as Rangers manager ranked in his list of priorities. “Registering somewhere below what I am having for dinner tonight,” he said at the time, in case you had forgotten.
If anything, his swatting aside of Juranovic’s remarks was even more disdainful.
“I don’t really care to be honest,” Postecoglou said.
“Josip was outstanding for us for 18 months. He won trophies and represented his country at a World Cup. Now he has gone on and he is doing fantastically well, and I couldn’t be happier for him.
“We continue on our journey now. The rest of it is just a soap opera for the masses.”
Juranovic’s bugbear seemed to be that Celtic had signed Canadian right-back Alistair Johnston while the pair were representing their respective countries at the World Cup. From the outside, it seemed to be sensible succession planning, with Juranovic long linked with a move away from Glasgow. In the Croatian’s account, Johnston’s arrival in fact pushed him towards that exit door.
Whatever the true course of events, Johnston’s quickfire acclimatisation to his new surroundings has undoubtedly softened the blow of Juranovic’s departure.
“We are a football club that is consistently trying to be successful,” Postecoglou said.
“I said previously that we have got to be really aggressive in the way that we push this squad to another level because we still believe we need to improve and get better, and the only way you can do that is to make sure that you are constantly looking to improve and reinvest in the squad.
“From our perspective, there are players who left in January after contributing to this football club and that is all we want. They have gone on with our best wishes, but my role is to reinvest that money and to try to make us a stronger team.
“It is fair to say most of our players when they come in, have settled in. This time last year we brought in Reo (Hatate) and Daizen (Maeda) and Matty O’Riley, and I don’t think they done too badly.
“The process for us is checking that we bring in guys who fit in with our football and have the right character, and Alistair certainly fits that bracket.
“He has hit the ground running and he got an opportunity earlier than we thought because Tony Ralston went down with an injury, and so his opportunity came, albeit that we had had a good two weeks with him in Portugal before the season started again and he was able to train with the team.
“A bit like the guys last January who have all kicked on since coming in, we are confident this will just be the first steps in his Celtic career.”
The Celtic players were given Monday off to sleep off their post League Cup Final celebrations, but were back at Lennoxtown on Tuesday to prepare for a tough away fixture tomorrow against St Mirren.
The SMiSA Stadium is the only venue where they have lost domestically this season, and in fact, it is the only stadium in the Premiership where Postecoglou himself has yet to register a victory. Or a goal, for that matter.
As far as the aberration in September is concerned, which came off the back of an away Champions League draw with Shakhtar Donetsk in Warsaw, the Celtic manager doesn’t think that 2-0 reverse will hold any psychological scars for his players.
“It is not the way I look at it,” he said.
“If you look at the last game and look at the line-ups and where we were in the season, there was a fairly logical explanation for that.
“We didn’t play well, they did, and we paid a price. We analysed that performance and we dealt with it, and we have improved since. Beyond that I don’t buy into anything else around it. I wouldn’t be seeing any kind of trend.”
It is fair to say that anyone who saw that game would not have predicted the impact that Aaron Mooy would go on to make for Celtic, the midfielder lasting just 45 minutes before being substituted in his first league start for the club.
“Again, with Aaron, there is a pretty logical explanation for that day too,” Postecoglou explained.
“I said at the time, he was nowhere near the fitness levels he needed to be, and he had to go away and really work on that, and we worked with him on that. It is fair to say he kicked on from there.”
Postecoglou certainly isn’t expecting any lingering hangover from Sunday’s festivities to affect the hunger within his squad for an afternoon’s graft in Paisley.
He added: “I think for the guys who got their first experience of a Celtic Cup final, I just think it is always good, whether it is your first one or whether you are like Callum (McGregor) who has done it so many times, whatever it is the most important thing is that you come out of it with the hunger and desire to go back and do it again and again. That is the main thing.
“That shouldn’t be diminished if you have done it before. Every time you go there and win a game like that it should provide the hunger and drive to keep going. I am sure it will have had that impact on the whole group.”
