ANGE POSTECOGLOU has told his Celtic players they have to defeat Ferencvaros today if they are to have any hope of reaching the knockout stages of the Europa League.
Defeats to Real Betis and Bayer Leverkusen in their opening two group stage matches have left Celtic playing catch-up already, and Postecoglou is under no illusions that anything less than three points will mean a fight with today’s opponents for third place and the consolation of a spot in the UEFA Conference League.
The Celtic manager believes that his men can learn from their two matches in the competition proper so far though and get the better of Ferencvaros to stay in touch with the group leaders.
“There’s no doubt about it, we need a result if we want to keep our hopes alive,” Postecoglou said.
“The other two in the group have already won a couple of games, so we kind of understand that particularly at home here we need to get three points tomorrow. There’s no shying away from that and it’s a good challenge for us.
“I think the two European games so far have shown that we can play good football and have an impact against the best teams, but we also have seen that we’ll get punished for our mistakes and any lapses in concentration.
“That’s part of the process for this team to keep evolving, but I think there’s enough in those two games to encourage us to continue to try and be an aggressive team, particularly here at home, and take it to the opposition.
“That’s our challenge tomorrow, to try and perform as we have in the other two games from an attacking perspective, but also really be on it as a team for the whole 90 minutes, or else we’ll get punished against good quality.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here