THE League Cup may not traditionally be the most important of the three domestic trophies on offer in Scotland, but try telling that to Ange Postecoglou.
For the Celtic manager, winning the tournament last season was the first sign to both the fans – and perhaps more importantly, his players - that his attacking brand of football could translate into cold, hard silverware.
It also gave him credibility within the Celtic boardroom, who saw right there and then that their manager was attempting to light a fire under this club, and that moment very well could be the spark to ignite it.
From there, they backed him without question in the January transfer window. Without that triumph over Hibernian at Hampden, there might not have been Reo Hatate, Daizen Maeda or Matt O’Riley. There might not even have been a league title to celebrate come May.
The League Cup win, in Postecoglou’s view, was the catalyst for everything that has followed, and hopefully will follow from here in Celtic’s future under his stewardship. Not so much a ‘Mickey Mouse’ tournament then, but the launching ground for a fairytale period at Celtic that Disney themselves might struggle to conceive.
“It was really important to get that success so early on,” Postecoglou said.
“I think the fans were really supportive from day one and bought into what we were trying to do at the club, they have given us tremendous support, but in terms of the players, it always helps to be able to show them that what we are doing can translate to success.
“It put a real belief into the group about the direction we were heading in.
“We had found our way a couple of months in after a bit of a rocky start to the season, but for me, if we were going to achieve what we wanted to last year – and obviously the league was our big priority – we had to accelerate our development.
“The best way to do that was to get people to have real belief, and winning a trophy in the first few months…people were well aware we were very much still at the beginning, building a team and playing our football, but the fact we could have success so quickly just accelerated a lot of things.
“It accelerated a lot of belief in what we were doing, the course we were on, the football we were playing and the players we had brought in.
“It gave other people belief in me too and what I was trying to do, and I think that helped move things on a lot quicker.
“At that time, we were shaping what January was going to look like in terms of transfer business, and having won that, we were able to put some strong plans in place.
“We could look at guys like Hatate, Maeda, Ideguchi and O’Riley because I think there was belief that we had started something here, so let’s really support it, because we’ve seen some of the fruits that have come our way.
“It’s the nature of the club that we can’t stand still. I knew that I wouldn’t be afforded a year or two to bring success to this club.
“I felt like there was an urgent need to do that last year, we had our year without winning anything the season before I came, but it doesn’t mean that because you have had some success you can rest on that.
“We want to win every competition we are in, and we showed everyone with that League Cup win that we could bring that success to the club.”
Celtic kick off their defence of that trophy in Dingwall tonight against Ross County, and it is just as important to Postecoglou this time around that his players make a return to Hampden to tuck it safely back into the cabinet and again set the tone for their season.
In that context, the match against County tonight holds just as much significance to the Celtic manager as the two that follow; against Rangers this Saturday, then the might of Real Madrid next midweek.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” he said. “That was our message to the players at the weekend.
“The most important game is the next one. You don’t want to be thinking about games that are two or three ahead and going into a game without the best intentions of playing good football going into it and getting a good result.
“The most important game for us is this one. We want to perform at a good level and make sure that we get the job done against a difficult opponent.
“That will then give us the impetus to look at the next challenge, whatever that may be.
“In this case, it’s against Rangers, but if we look beyond Ross County and dismiss that game then we haven’t had the ideal preparation to meet the challenges ahead.”
Their preparation for heading into the County game could hardly have been better, with the 9-0 immolation of Dundee United ensuring a buzz was evident in the camp on the long road back north.
While Postecoglou says he will rotate his squad with the challenges ahead in mind, he wants to see the same intensity from whoever he puts out onto the field as he did at Tannadice, challenging them to grasp their opportunity to impress.
“I will make some changes for the game,” he said. “I haven’t settled on how many yet, but the important thing is that we put out a team that is still strong enough to win the game. Ross County is always a difficult place to go.
“That being said, we won’t get back until the early hours of the next morning, and we have to factor in what is ahead at the weekend and beyond too.
“But we have to put out a team that can reach the required level to win what is a very important game for us, and I’m confident we have the players to do that.”
New signing Sead Haksabanovic is not yet fit enough to start, but Postecoglou said he may get a run-out from the bench at some point in the game.
Giorgos Giakoumakis, who missed the win at Tannadice through illness, has trained in the last two days and is fully fit.
