BEING a full-back under Ange Postecoglou involves adhering to a rather different job description than the norm, and so it is to the credit of the likes of Josip Juranovic, Greg Taylor and Anthony Ralston that they have managed to adapt to the unique demands of the role placed upon them by the Celtic manager.
It is also why Juranovic himself now as a senior member of the Celtic squad has been keen to pass on any advice he can to new left-back Alexandro Bernabei, who has taken those pointers on board and finally started to show he can thrive within Postecoglou’s system over the past couple of weeks.
For Juranovic, his ability to shine in this Celtic team was never in doubt, as he wouldn’t have been brought to the club in the first place if he didn’t possess the required qualities.
“I’m trying to give him advice about settling in and our style of play but he doesn’t know English very well, but will learn,” Juranovic said.
“But you can see that he’s played a few games and is now doing very well. He made an assist on Saturday and that’s the most important thing.
“He’s doing well away from the pitch also. He’s a great person and I know that we will see more good stuff from him this season.
“It’s difficult [to play as a full-back with Celtic] because it’s all about going inside and outside, talking with our number six.
“But it’s because of those demands that we are at Celtic. We want to achieve everything and we will do that.
“You could see on Saturday that we have real depth in the squad. A lot of players have been waiting for their opportunity and I think we have shown that whoever is playing we can damage the other team. That’s the most important thing.
“No matter what changes the manager makes, we are all very comfortable playing with each other. Now we all know what each player is doing. We are just like a really big family here.
“We know what the wingers will do, we know that the full-backs will do. So we know our plan, we listen to the coach and we carry it out.”
Juranovic is hoping that Celtic can once again go all the way in the League Cup this season, and they can take a step towards repeating that feat with a win over Motherwell at Fir Park in tonight’s quarter-final tie.
“We are doing our jobs so we can bring trophies home,” he said.
“We want to do that like last year maybe even better to show them who we are, how we play. On Wednesday we need to show our faces on the pitch. That’s it.
“If we hadn’t won it last year, we could still have had a belief to play even stronger. But when we won it, we took the confidence from it and we showed everybody who we are.
“I think our performances have been really good. It’s a cup game so we just need to go one hundred percent from the first minute until the last. I always say, the best team on the day will win.”
