ANGE POSTECOGLOU has dismissed controversy over Celtic’s second goal at Tynecastle as he spoke of his pride in his players for weathering a second-half storm to beat Hearts 2-1.
Both Giorgos Giakoumakis’s goal for Celtic and Liam Boyce’s strike that got the hosts back into the game appeared to be scored from offside positions, but neither were flagged by the far-side assistant referee.
Postecoglou said he couldn’t care less about the calls after the game though, saying his focus was on how well his team played, and how much grit they showed to get over the line.
“Mate, I dunno, they love talking about decisions here don’t they?” Postecoglou said.
“I like analysing the game of football. ‘Their’s is offside, our’s was offside’, you know mate, it doesn’t matter.
“All I see is that we played really well tonight, created a lot of opportunities, Craig Gordon had a few saves to make, we just should have finished it off earlier.
“It was a cracking game and I’m really pleased. I’m very proud of the players, we had a bit of a challenge tonight, it’s not an easy place to come.
“I thought we played well, got our goals, and had to defend a bit at the end. I’m really proud of them.
“You always have to show both sides of the game when you come away from home, particularly against a team that is doing well and is in good form, so there’s going to be periods.
“We could have finished the game off earlier, we had some good chances, but once they got the goal obviously the crowd got behind them.
“I still thought that we handled it really well.”
Postecoglou was particularly delighted with Reo Hatate – who opened the scoring with a thunderbolt of a strike – and the performance of debutant Matt O’Riley.
“It’s super pleasing,” he said.
“You’ve got to keep it in context, Matt O’Riley came in a few days ago and I thought he was outstanding. He’s had 70 minutes of football in the last month. It was brilliant.
“We had a challenge tonight for sure, everyone knows the players we have missing are significant absences, and there were guys out there had to step up – and they did.”
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