SUCCESS, to paraphrase the saying, is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. On paper, by any measure, it would be a stretch to describe Celtic’s single point from their opening four Champions League group matches as such.
Ange Postecoglou knows as much, and the Celtic manager’s own ambitions for his team wouldn’t allow him to argue otherwise. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it has been a failure either.
In taking a step back to look at the bigger picture, Postecoglou does find a measure of success in what his team have done so far at the top level of European football, and in how their uncompromising brand of football has stacked up.
Any fair assessment of Celtic’s performances so far in Group F would conclude that it has made them a competitive proposition for every team they have faced, even if a bafflingly low chance conversion rate and a propensity for being caught out at the back by the lightning transitions commonly found at this level haven’t given them a live chance of progression to the knockout stages.
In the context of this being their first foray back in this competition in five seasons, Europa League football after Christmas would surely be success. Only a win over Shakhtar Donetsk tonight at Celtic Park and at least a point in the Bernabeu on matchday six will give them any hope of achieving that.
But for Postecoglou, the real success lies in the longer term lessons, and what this campaign may do for his team the next time they have crack at the competition.
“I think it will only be a success if we stick on this path,” Postecoglou said. “If we qualify next year, and that’s our first job, but if we qualify again and continue down this road.
“It won’t be a success if we tear it all up and take a different approach because we feel that this way isn’t going to work.
“Somebody mentioned Bruges to me the other day, and just have a look at Bruges’s record in the Champions League, and how long it has taken them to get to that sweet spot.
“But if you are constantly there, and you are constantly knocking on the door, and you are taking a consistent approach, I really believe that for a club like ours there will come a year where it all comes together.
“Instead of hitting the post, the ball is going to go in. We’re going to score in the first minute and get the crowd behind us instead of missing those opportunities. It will all come together.
“But that will never happen, that sweet spot will never happen, if you get to where we are now, tear it all up and say it didn’t work because we didn’t win a game.
“If we take a different approach next year then that is where this year won’t be a success, so for me that is where measure of it lies.”
All that being said, Postecoglou isn’t satisfied that plaudits have far outweighed points so far in this group stage.
“I don’t wear that as a badge of honour,” he said. “I want to win games, I don’t like losing. I get as disappointed [as anyone].
“But I set us a certain task in this group, this campaign, to play a certain way. Now if I said that and what you guys saw, what I saw, was something different there would be cause for questioning our whole approach.
“But, we said we want to take the game to the opposition, we want to play attacking football, we want to create opportunities – and I think we’ve done that. We’ve fallen short in executing in that final third in all the games, including against Shakhtar in Poland.
“Now, there are fine margins in that. We’ve hit the post a number of times, we’ve missed some really good opportunities that you’d think we’d be able to take. So we have fallen short.
“But what I do take pride in is the fact that the players have been brave enough to go out there against the best opposition, not fear conceding goals against very good opposition and potentially have some heavy defeats. Take it to the opposition.
“I take strength from that in that if we improve, if we keep doing this…we’ve got to keep getting to this level, consistently qualifying and putting ourselves in the same position we’ve done this year of playing games and creating opportunities.
“I believe if we keep doing that over a number of years you’ll hit a sweet spot somewhere, which a club like ours has to. Where it all comes together and you get the success.”
That explains just why Postecoglou is keen to get as much European football under his team’s belt as possible this term, even if that is in the Europa League. Only by competing at such a level more regularly, he believes, will his players be able to overcome their apparent yips in front of goal that are absent on the domestic scene.
“More than anything there is a realisation that time and space diminishes the higher the level you go,” he said.
“I can talk about and prepare them for it and try and coach them and give them guidance but until you are out there…you know the chances come quicker, the space is smaller. But they are still there.
“In the vacuum of the chance itself our players have the technique to finish it off, but when it happens quicker, it needs an adjustment. The more you play at this level, providing the player adapts – and for some the level becomes beyond them, and you realise they are never going to get there – but from what I have seen from our guys…
“It is still young group, with every game I can see them embracing it. They are going to go out [on Tuesday night] knowing there is not going to be a lot of time, there is not going to be a lot of space. Chances will come quickly. And I think they are better prepared for it.
“But until you get that feeling that you have accomplished it, you are always going to be out there searching for those answers.”
What the experience certainly has given Celtic in the short term is another gear that Premiership opponents are finding hugely difficult to live with.
“I said to the players if we maintained our levels against Leipzig in terms of physically and tempo in the league, we will destroy teams,” Postecoglou said. “And that is what has happened since then.
“We could have come out of that Leipzig game and said we didn’t win, things aren’t great.
“But what it showed them is that if they play at this tempo in the local competition, in the championship, then we will blow teams away.”
