BETWEEN the Covid-interrupted 2019/20 season and the following one that was played exclusively behind closed doors, Scottish football supporters haven’t been left shy of one-off campaigns in recent years. Both brought unique and bespoke problems that had to be carefully negotiated – and we are approaching yet another season that will bring its own distinct issues.
Thankfully, this time the problem will be a logistical one, as opposed to the response to a pandemic. You see, this year there happens to be a World Cup being held in the winter. It hasn’t happened before and it is difficult to envisage it happening again anytime soon.
The upcoming Premiership season has been congested and bisected in order to accommodate the showpiece occasion in Qatar. By the mid-November, club squads will disband to represent their nation before the ball gets rolling again, so to speak, shortly before Christmas.
The campaign will start a little earlier for those not competing in Europe – it’s now less than a week until the group stages of the Premier Sports Cup get under way – and conclude a few weeks later as matches are crammed into an already-crowded fixture list.
It is a season that will place a unique set of demands on Premiership players and there is one factor in particular that will play a telling roll in each team’s success – or lack thereof – over the next 12 months: squad depth. And the good news for Celtic fans is that Ange Postecoglou appears to be acutely aware of the situation his team will be facing.
The Premiership champions are in for grueling campaign, especially if they go on to secure European football after Christmas. Months where eight or nine matches have to be played will not be unusual – indeed, depending on results on the continent they may even become the norm – and although the Celtic squad aren’t exactly strangers to an extensive fixture list (the team played 60 matches last term), doing so in a truncated period of time will result in a rigorous examination of Postecoglou’s squad, all the way from first-team regulars down to those on the fringes.
We are likely to see a lot more chopping and changing in the starting XI this season as Postecoglou bids to manage players’ fitness and keep them available. Burnout will be a very real concern – even for figures like the indefatigable Callum McGregor – and game-time will have to be carefully considered. Direct entry into the group stages of the Champions League shaves a few fixtures off the calendar but Celtic will likely still find themselves playing somewhere between 50 and 60 matches next season, with one fewer month in which to play them.
Postecoglou hasn’t been shy when it comes to rotating his squad, and this practice could well be decisive in next season’s title race. As many as 40 different players made at least one first-team appearance last term as Postecoglou leaned heavily on his squad, giving plenty of his charges an opportunity to acclimatise to the first team and get to grips with his tactics – although there are a few degrees of mitigation here.
During the initial months of Postecoglou’s time at Parkhead there was a fair bit of turnover in the starting XI. The likes of Ryan Christie and Odsonne Edouard were sold towards the end of the summer transfer window but picked up a few appearances early on in the season, while there were plenty of new faces brought in in both windows as Postecoglou went about stamping his authority on the squad.
Postecoglou was also able to call upon a vast array of players as the decision was made to continue the seven-substitutes rule for the 2021/22 season, and the physical demands of the Greek-Australian’s tactical system necessitate a policy of squad rotation, too. But whatever the reason, one thing is for certain: Celtic will feel the benefits of Postecoglou’s approach in the coming campaign.
The foundations have already been laid. Players who might not be part of the strongest XI still received significant game-time last year as they became well-versed in their manager’s style of play. Of the 40 players to have made a first-team appearance last term, 27 finished the season with over 500 minutes under their belts. Nineteen had over 1000.
It’s this ability to mix-and-match, to rest certain players whilst giving others an opportunity to stake their claim, that will prove invaluable this coming year. Having a player available to step into the breach in the event of a regular starter’s injury is all well and good but if they are not used to playing with their team-mates in a competitive setting, playing within a system that they truly understand and in a role that suits them, then it can be difficult to hit the ground running.
Postecoglou has built his Celtic squad in such a manner that even when key individuals are forced to miss out through injury or suspension, the team still functions just fine. Replacements and understudies perform similar roles to the established first-team stars – and so mitigate their loss – and, crucially, are rarely brought in from the cold and shoved straight into the starting XI.
When an important player does have to miss out for an extended period of time – such as Kyogo Fuuhashi did last season – the absence is felt, sure, but it shouldn’t change Celtic’s fortunes on the park all that much. In that instance, Giorgos Giakoumakis stepped up to the plate and ended up as the league’s joint-top scorer. Postecoglou’s team play in a singular fashion and a natural byproduct of that is that they simply aren’t as reliant on individual players as other clubs.
In terms of fitness and tactical adaptability, Celtic are better prepared than most for the rigours of the new campaign. The squad’s strength in depth and Postecoglou’s rotation policy are an inevitable consequence of the intense brand of football that the manager has instilled in the players and the regular 60-game seasons they undergo. Sharing the minutes around next season will be of utmost importance for any team to succeed, and Postecoglou’s approach has given Celtic a head start.
