'My role is to intervene at this moment': Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou plans action in wake of RB Leipzig defeat

Across his 15-month tenure as Celtic manager, Ange Postecoglou has rarely upbraided his players in the fashion he did following their 3-1 Champions League loss away to RB Leipzig in midweek.

Celtic's Ange Postecoglou believes "nothing else can replicate" the learning to be gained from the experience of poor decision-making than living through such a spell as befell his team in Leipzig. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

The Australian castigated his team for slipping into a negative mindset once they had drawn level. A development that manifested itself in consistently playing the ball back to Joe Hart, whose misplaced pass from such a phase led to the Germans’ second goal. The post-mortem necessitated some home truths but also the path from which they must not deviate, according to the 57-year-old.

"My role is to intervene at this moment. If I don't then what is the point of being the manager of this club?” said Postecoglou. “My role is to show them the way forward and give them the solutions that exist to make sure we deal with those scenarios differently. I will look at different aspects of the game with the players. We did our video review on Friday morning, as we always do, and we give them the opportunity to use the tools and the resources to deal with it better next time.”

The Celtic manager received no pushback from his charges over how they had allowed themselves to become stuck in a rut in Leipzig. It was the sort of realisation that Postecoglou understands sometimes requires to be learned the hard way. “You have to live through the experience of games like that,” he said. “Nothing else can replicate going through the process of living it. You can prepare for it but those sort of games are about experiencing it. But it's about how you live that experience. You can waste it if you look for different reasons as to why you lost, and not the important stuff. For us, there are key components in our game. When we do them well, we are a very good football side. When we go away from that against other teams with strong identities, you struggle. We have to be at our best and the players recognise that. They have lived through it and it's an opportunity to improve.”

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