JAMES FORREST has just about seen it all at Celtic, but he had never seen such a turnaround in the squad as he did last summer as Ange Postecoglou was tasked with an almighty rebuild upon his arrival in Glasgow.
Remarkably, the Celtic manager managed to mould that new group into a unit capable not only of frequently thrilling the fans with their brand of high energy, attacking football, but also one mentally resilient enough to outlast Rangers and regain the Premiership title.
The bad news for Celtic’s rivals is that Forrest believes they will be an even more formidable outfit this term, which stands to reason given the far more settled look about Postecoglou’s squad. New additions will now be supplementing that base from a position of strength, a formula Forrest knows from experience to be a winning one.
“Last season we were still signing two, three, four players going into the last week of the window, Forrest told Celtic TV.
“I think it’s the biggest turnaround in a squad I’ve seen since I’ve been here.
“We have got a base and a core group again, and I’ve seen over the years that’s when we’ve been most successful, when you have got the majority of the squad there and everyone knows each other.
“The squad did settle in really quick last year, and I think that can only benefit us going into next season.”
The two medals Forrest added to his incredible career haul last season strengthened his own position further among Celtic’s most decorated players, but the collective success rather masks his own personal struggles throughout the campaign through injury.
Despite his own ups and downs though, Forrest says he enjoyed working under Postecoglou in his first term at the club, and is relishing the opportunity to play a fuller part if he can stay injury free next season.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I really enjoyed last season when I was playing and I just need to keep myself fit as long as I can and try to help the team when I can as well.
“It’s been a good start to pre-season and I’ll just be taking small steps at a time.
“It was a good bit of time off [for me at the end of the season]. Because we won the league and go straight in [to the Champions League] with no qualifiers, the boys who didn’t go away on international duty managed to get a few weeks off.
“It was a bit of a balance and I’m looking forward to getting back into training.
“This [close season] has been different, because for the last number of years I’ve only had a week or 10 days off and then you were back in, so you didn’t really feel as if you were away.
“Having this four or five weeks off was good, and it means that once you come back in you are really looking forward to getting going again.”
With that Champions League group stage football secured for the first time in five years, there is indeed much for Celtic to look forward to, but Forrest is adhering rigidly to the ‘one day at a time’ philosophy that served Postecoglou’s men so well last season.
“It’s still quite early the now,” he said. “I think once the games start coming around and when the qualifiers for the Champions League start it will maybe sink in that we’re not in the qualifiers, we’re going straight in and everybody will be looking forward to the draw.
“There’s a lot of exciting games and a lot of exciting moments that I think everybody is going to be looking forward to this season.”
