Ange Refutes Starting XI Decision

Ange Postecoglou was asked if the Celtic starting XI vs Norwich on Saturday was indicative of what we can expect from the lineup next Sunday against Aberdeen.

The overwhelming thought is Ange decided to play the team he believes should start Celtic’s first SPFL game of the season and gave them all around 60 minutes to make sure they’re as sharp as possible.

Speaking to the Glasgow Times, the manager was keeping his cards close to his chest claiming refuted the notion he already knows who will start against The Dons.

Instead, the Celtic manager stressed the collective is in his thoughts rather than the starting XI: “I don’t know what it is but I’ll have a starting team and there will be at least eleven ready for it,” he said.

“For me, what’s important is that we have a team of players who are ready to go.

“I think we showed [in the second half of] last season our ability to play games out strongly and that was due to having a strong bench and players who could come on do a job. So I don’t look at it as starting or non-starting.”

“It’s all about a group of players and I was happy today with the guys who came on. They didn’t allow the intensity to drop which can happen when you make all of these changes.

“That was good to see and what’s important is that we have another eight days of good solid work on the training ground and the early part of August is good for us as we only have one game each week.

“That allows us to keep working, and when the congestion hits, we are going to have a squad which is hopefully ready to handle it all.”

Continuing, Ange spoke about the benefits of their pre-season this year and the hard work being done behind the scenes away from the games:

“The reality is we’re working hard in training so we’re not going into games wondering if the players are going to be fine,”

“The whole point of pre-season is to prepare them for what’s ahead. It’s not just about winning games. In all our games we’ve shown a few bright spots but today was probably the most solid we’ve been both with the ball and without it.

“We’ll have a good week of training, freshen them up at the back end of the week and hopefully we’ll see the team being in a much better position to play with the sort of high tempo intensity that we want.”

For what it’s worth, we believe the side that did start against Norwich will be roughly what we see on flag day. There are a few positions up for grabs; left back and centre back could easily see Alexandro Bernabei and Moritz Jenz come in at the expense of Greg Taylor as well as Stephen Welsh.

No matter who Ange goes with, the Hoops gaffer is spot on, we’re in a good position going into the new season and it’s time to lay down a new marker.

Towards the end of last season, teams didn’t know what to do against Celtic. If they sat off, they would find a way through, if they tried to stand up to the press, the bhoys picked them apart.