Ange Postecoglou reveals how he knew Celtic would avoid Rangers comedown

Celtic’s Ange Postecoglou maintained he knew his team would hit the heights again at Motherwell from watching them in training the day prior to the 4-0 thumping they registered at Fir Park.

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou at full time after the 4-0 win over Motherwell. (Photo by Alan Harvey / SNS Group)

There can be understandable apprehension over a potential comedown following such a momentous evening as the 3-0 hiding of Rangers on Wednesday that sent Celic top of the table, and in which Postecoglou recognised his players “invested a lot emotionally and physically”.

But any concerns evaporated 24 hours before their trip to Lanarkshire, which produced a double from Tom Rogic and an opener from Liel Abada in the sparkling first half, subsequently added to by a Daizen Maeda strike.

“We are human beings,” the Celtic manager said. “It’s not just I say we focus on the next one [after Wednesday] and they can put it to bed. It takes it’s toll. I watched training on Saturday and, even the guys who didn’t play, the training was relentless and really competitive. So I kind of knew we would be fine.

“It’s not easy. What with the conditions and the fact Motherwell are a hard team to break down. They can make it frustrating. Putting it all in context, I guess the biggest difference is that we have dominated games in the past, but here we got our rewards for it in terms of goals. We probably could have had a few more. In the context of it coming after Wednesday night, I thought it was a strong performance.”

Celtic’s attacking arsenal results in little attention being played to their backine but the Motherwell success was their their fourth clean sheet in their past five league matches, with the settled centre-back pairing of Cameron Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt instrumental in Celtic being a team that is difficult to break down, never mind nullify.

“To be fair to them, the settling-in process wasn’t easy. I was throwing guys in who hadn’t trained with the team,” Postecoglou said of almost entirely reshaping his back five. "I think people were a bit harsh at the start in terms of assessing the abilities of players. With defending, you need understanding, you need cohesion and to get to know one another.”

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