Callum McGregor insists Celtic want to keep Ange Postecoglou for as long as possible amid claims he has emerged as a target for Chelsea.
A report in England on Saturday stated the 57-year-old Greek-Australian is an ‘outsider’ candidate among those being considered by the Stamford Bridge club as they seek to replace Graham Potter, albeit it is widely believed their preferred choice remains Mauricio Pochettino.
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly fired former Brighton manager Potter after just seven months earlier in April, having previously sacked Champions League-winning coach Thomas Tuchel for a poor run of results in September last year.
Postecoglou has been a hugely successful appointment for Celtic, delivering the Premiership title and League Cup last term, and is on course to complete a domestic clean sweep this season. McGregor says the work his manager has done is bound to attract admiring glances from far and wide, but he is confident his full focus is on delivering more success to Parkhead.
"He's been fantastic,” the Celtic captain said. “He's had a really good tenure and we want to keep him. His work is outstanding and he's a really good person. That's the type of people you want to work with and we would be delighted to keep as long as we can.
"His work speaks for itself, the style that he plays, the attacking and the amount of goals that we score. That's going to get people talking but I think his full focus is going to be on the job at hand here and as long as we can keep him we will be delighted."
Meanwhile, Postecoglou himself admitted his team got 'a bit desperate' in trying to overcome a dogged Motherwell on Saturday afternoon.
Celtic were denied victory at home for the first time in their domestic campaign as Kevin van Veen cancelled out McGregor's opener.
"Obviously it's a disappointing outcome and the performance was not really at the levels we've shown before," Postecoglou said. "We controlled the game for the most part pretty well.
"First half was fine. We scored our goal and we had some chances to get a second which we didn't take advantage of. But at the same time I thought we were in control.
"We knew the game would open up but then we conceded a really poor goal from our perspective which gave the opposition some encouragement and we lost our composure a little bit, got a bit desperate at times. Having said that, we made some good chances to score a goal and we didn't take them."
