Ange Postecoglou has doubled down on his Celtic style principles despite failing to win in the Champions League so far.
The Hoops went toe-to-toe with RB Leipzig in midweek but ultimately went down 3-1 to the Bundesliga outfit. The Germans adopted a similarly attacking approach to their opponents and in the end, were able to outscore the Scottish champions in an open game. Jota cancelled out Christopher Nkunku’s opener before Andre Silva’s double - with a helping hand from Joe Hart - saw Marco Rose’s side run out deserved winners of the Group F encounter.
That’s led to renewed queries as to whether Postecoglou would be better adopting a more pragmatic approach to these fixtures. But the Aussie is adamant his players will keep doing what they’re doing regardless of competition, explaining that their style of play gives Celtic a sense of security and that changing it up too often breeds uncertainty in the ranks.
Ahead of facing St Johnstone, he said: “We kind of understand that, but I think we’ve been pretty good at making sure our game doesn’t really change. Obviously the challenge is different in terms of the styles you play (against) but for the most part, the security we have is that our football fundamentals don’t change depending on the competition we’re in.
“If you chop and change so your style is different in one competition and then another, then there’s always a little bit of uncertainty. Will the guys switch the way we want to play? But our approach is consistent and that helps when you’re in different competitions. You don’t have to shift your mentality to any extent, just stick to the basic principles and that’s what we’ll need to do tomorrow.”
When asked if he feels there’s been a drop off in intensity levels in domestic games, Postecoglou disagreed. He admitted that there haven’t been as many goals in recent Premiership games, but he and his staff and squad measure their progress on more than just the final score at the end of 90 minutes.
“Not really,” he said. “I get it, it’s just the nature of football and the nature of life that people just look at results and work their way back from that. That’s the world we live in and that’s the world of football.
“You understand that’s how people will ultimately measure football and how a team is going, but that’s not how we measure it. You look at the Motherwell game and people will say we struggled, but we know we created as many good opportunities in that game as we didn't against Dundee United. But we didn’t score.
My thing is always about progress. If people put a pin in the calendar date today and go back 12 months, I reckon we were fourth or fifth in the league. If you’d said at that time, you’re going to be playing Champions League football and going against the best in the world, people would say we’ve made pretty decent progress.
“We’re certainly a better side than we were last year and we're certainly still improving that. That’s not going to change people’s outlook because for the most part all they're going to see is results and that’s they’re only measure.”
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