Anthony Ralston believes Celtic wins in Europe will come if the players and fans continue to believe in Ange Postecoglou.
Last night, a depleted Celtic team took La Liga giants Real Betis to the wire. Two early goals from Ajeti and Juranovic set the Bhoys up nicely, but devastating counter-attacking from Betis ensured that Celtic lost 4-3 in an absolute classic.
Ralston, who scored late on as Celtic rallied, was insistent that Celtic are moving in the right direction. And, if they’d been more clinical, it could’ve changed everything.
The defender said [Herald]:
“I feel there’s a lot more to come from this group of players, we’ve got a quality team.
“And on top of that we have the desire to go places and a strong belief in how the gaffer wants us to play.
“I feel we are implementing that, even at this level as well. So it’s important we continue to do that and believe in each other and focus on each game as it comes and try and keep climbing and doing what we can.
“It’s disappointing to lose the game as clearly our intention was to come here and try to win the game.
“We are where we are and it’s still disappointing to lose the game but we need to take all of those positives into the future.
“Betis are a top quality side and we already knew that. We didn’t fear that and we believed we could come here and win. We wanted to play our football in the style we wanted to play and it’s unfortunate that we lost the game.
“Even though they are a quality side we are now ready to all of those positives into our future games.”
Anthony Ralston is right; if Celtic follow Postecolgou and his methodology, results will come
It’s hard not to look at the “What ifs” from last night. For example, what if that defence played together more frequently? Or if Ajeti’s second is onside? What if we had Callum McGregor? So on, and so forth.
However, the difference after this European loss is that at least there’s genuine optimism about what comes next.
Instead of being gutted, Celtic supporters are backing the manager and the players. There’s no grand inquest about what went wrong last night. It’s more a case of accepting the result, picking out the positives, and being excited for the future.
That represents a significant culture change. It also shows the breadth of appreciation that fans have for this manager.
There’s no getting around it, Postecoglou has a footballing ideology he’s going to stick to rigidly. Eventually, that will yield big results and terrify the life out of big European teams.
Ralston’s got it bang on: this is a good team, that can only get better. The results will come.
In other news: Ange Postecoglou praises hard-working Ajeti after Celtic loss
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