Ange Postecoglou is unlikely to have spent the last week reading through newspapers and surfing through websites.
Even so the Celtic boss will be well aware of the media negativity that followed last Sunday’s defeat in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup.
Having engineered a 12 point swing in the race for the SPFL Premiership it seemed like much of that work was forgotten in favour of 120 minutes of a cup tie.
Friday’s media conferences were dominated by the impact of losing at Hampden. Postecoglou seemed mildly bewildered by it, his side lost one match, they hadn’t thrown away a six point advantage against a squad that had basically been built over the course of two transfer windows.
The Celtic manager is every inch the diplomat, the angriest that he gets is a slightly sarcastic answer signed off with ‘mate’.
After the win over Ross County today it seemed that the Celtic boss had a few things to get off his chest as he told BBC Scotland:
Normal service got interrupted because we lost a semi-final in extra-time by a single goal, so we never felt anything had changed dramatically after last week and, certainly in terms of the league, it didn’t affect us.
A difficult place here to play against a difficult opponent and I thought we played really well today.
It feels like another important day for us, but every day is an important day for us and I’ve been saying that since week six. We’ve had to be almost perfect and players have been dealing with that every day.
This Friday’s media conferences are likely to be overflowing with hyped up questions- focussing on winning the next match by producing the right type of performance is all that bothers Postecoglou, with absolutely no distractions.
