Postecoglou details his battle against complacency

Ange Postecoglou is determined to ensure that complacency never becomes an issue at Celtic Park. 

A year ago the Australian inherited a club on the floor, lacking players and purpose after the wheels had came off in spectacular fashion on the back of four consecutive treble wins. 

Postecoglou had faith in his own ways of doing things, rebuilt a squad during the summer transfer window then nursed them through to January when he had time to bring in exactly the players that he knew were needed to kick on from a promising but hesitant start. 

One of the most surprising factors has been the lack of change in the backroom staff, it would have been easy for the new boss to have drafted in a whole load of coaches from his jobs in Australia and Japan. 

After a season of success it would be easy to stick with the winning formula but ever wary of complacency Stephen McManus has been moved to work with the B team with Harry Kewell appointed to work alongside John Kennedy and Gavin Strachan on the training ground. 

Explaining the changes to The Sun, Postecoglou said: 

I always try to maintain a dynamic environment where there is an enthusiasm and freshness around the place. Sometimes that’s new voices, sometimes it’s subtle changes around where you train or the way you train. 

It’s not about one person. It’s just about making sure players and staff continue to improve. You need that uncertainty there to motivate them to improve 

We have brought in Harry and made a couple of subtle changes to the coaching staff, so people don’t get too comfortable in terms of the voices that they hear. 

You are always trying to make those subtle changes because, from the first day of pre-season, you don’t want the players to think, ‘OK, we’re just going to roll out what we did last year’ and expect success to come. That’s not how it works. 

Kewell had a number of jobs managing at the bottom end of the English Football League- in five weeks time he’ll be back in the big time with Celtic in the Champions League group stage.