Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou has made it clear the first-half performance from his team vs Raith Rovers wasn’t good enough this afternoon.
As we’ve already discussed tonight, the Bhoys boss was not a happy man on the touchline prior to the interval. I suspect he gave them a talking to at half-time.
The Celtic performance did improve after the break, most notably with the impact of substitutes such as Jota and Daizen Maeda. Ultimately the Bhoys won 4-0 and progressed to the quarter-finals.
Ange Postecoglou sends clear Celtic message after Raith Rovers
Speaking on Premier Sports after the game, Postecoglou was very honest about it all.
He said: “Yeah, the first-half was pretty poor. Obviously, when I’m making so many changes it’s going to affect the rhythm and cohesion, but even within that we weren’t great. We didn’t work hard enough, we didn’t move the ball quick enough. The second half was a lot better and it’s good to get through to the next round.
“It’s not like they’re going to be banished into some unknown place after today. It’s just we’ve got certain standards about how hard we want to work and how quickly we want to play. We were taking too many touches and weren’t working hard enough off the ball.
“Whilst we were comfortable, that’s not what I want us to be, I don’t want us to be comfortable.”
This is exactly what we want to hear from the manager. Everyone who watched today’s game noticed a slackness of play from Celtic. Standards undoubtedly dipped.
Postecoglou won’t settle for second best in any encounter, even if the team hold a lead.
Clearly he still feels his message is yet to sink in for some players and hopefully that bodes well for even more improvement over the coming weeks and months.
In other news, Ange’s anger, the Jota effect; 3 things we learned from Celtic win vs Raith Rovers
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