Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou was content with his team’s performance if not their finishing after they battled to a 2-1 win over Motherwell in Paradise yesterday.
The champions opened the scoring through Kyogo but were pegged back after some miscommunication in defence led to a Josip Juranovic own-goal.
Celtic found a winner after an hour when Reo Hatate rifled a shot past Liam Kelly from outside the box and Postecoglou felt that it was no more than his team deserved after creating enough chances for a more comprehensive victory.
He told BBC Radio Scotland (From 20:45): “When you’ve lost your previous game you don’t want to get into that rut where you make things difficult for yourself so it was important to win – we certainly created enough chances to win the game more comfortably than we did and had a couple of self-inflicted wounds so we probably made it closer than it should’ve been.
“We hit the post twice so I thought we were unlucky there but we could have been more ruthless and efficient in the front third, there were some chances that we usually take that we didn’t today, along with giving them a goal which kept them in the game and made it more difficult than it should have been.”
Postecoglou was full of praise who despite making an error that led to Callum McGregor’s late red card, had an otherwise glittering match, scoring the winner and taking part in several great moves.
“He’s a very talented young player, people need to understand his background, he came out of university at 22 and has probably only been a professional footballer for three seasons so I saw what he did as a professional in his first year in Japan and he made an impact straight away and you know when that’s the baseline and knowing his character that he’s pretty determined to be a top footballer.
“There’s more to come still and he’s pretty hard on himself, he’ll look at himself today and say that he could play better and I’m sure he will.”
On McGregor’s aforementioned red card, the manager said: “From my angle I thought we had a covering player but the referee has made his decision so we’ve just got to cop it.”
Postecoglou will be without his captain for weekend’s trip to McDiarmid Park to face St Johnstone, assuming that the club do not appeal the straight red card.
McGregor has been impossible to leave out for club and country this season but was due some rotation at some stage, and the game in Perth will represent a new challenge for the Aussie as he must replace the fulcrum of his team.
Before that, he’ll have McGregor available as Celtic face Leipzig in Germany on Wednesday when they return to UEFA Champions League duties.
In other news: Michael Stewart in Postecoglou Celtic-Motherwell agreement; offers Leipzig Champions League take
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