ANGE Postecoglou has brushed aside the significance of Celtic stretching their lead over Rangers at the top of the cinch Premiership to nine points – but admitted his men have a “good chance” of lifting the Scottish title if they maintain their current performance levels.
Postecoglou’s side thrashed St Johnstone 7-0 at Parkhead yesterday to move further ahead of their defending champions, who take on St Mirren in Paisley this afternoon, at the top of the league table with five matches remaining.
However, the Greek-Australian coach, whose men play their Ibrox rivals in the Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden a week today, is unconcerned about their position at this stage in the season and is simply focusing on maintaining their winning run.
“We don’t have to hold on to anything,” he said. “We are not desperate for anything we are doing okay.
“We will just keep doing what we are doing. We have five games to play and what we keep talking about is that we want to keep playing our best football and try to peak which was always our goal for this time of the year.
“We need to keep our head down, put the accelerator down and if we keep playing as we did today we will have a good chance.”
Asked about Celtic’s performance against St Johnstone, Postecoglou said: “We were on it from the start. It was a danger game for us because St Johnstone have been on good form and are hard to break down.
“We needed to start well and like a lot of games we were on top early. But it was good to see us keep going. At half-time we spoke about that because it was a game we could have seen out quite comfortably.
"There’s a couple of things at work there – one is the players, who consistently try to push themselves and we also had some quality coming off the bench which helps to drive things too. The group as a whole wanted to finish off their good work.”
Postecoglou believes the number of goalscorers that Celtic have in their side and the strength in depth that he now has in his squad following the return of Kyogo Furuhashi and David Turnbull are the big factors in the Parkhead club's current form.
Asked abou the fact that six players scored against St Johnstone, he said: "It is great. It has been key for us. At the start of the year it was Kyogo, Dave, Liel (Abada) and Jota who were doing it and now it is Daizen (Maeda), Giorgos (Giakoumakis), Matty (O'Riley) and (Reo) Hatate. It is an important part of who we want to be as a team.
"We don't want to be too reliant on one or two guys for our goals. We have had goals from Anthony Ralston at full back, Josip Juranovic through his penalties, so that is an important part of who we are as well.
"We want to be a team who has multiple threats and players will take confidence from the fact that we had so many scoring today."
Asked about the quality he had on the bench against St Johnstone, he said: "It is super important. As I said, it is not just about game day.
"That is the result of a week's work and the guys who are on the bench and not involved today. Ralston didn't get on, (Yosuke) Ideguchi didn't get on,
"(Nir) Bitton, (Stephen) Welshy, is not in the squad, James Forrest, Mikey Johnston, all these guys every day at training are producing fantastic levels and I could pick any one of them.
"So the fact that they are all working that hard at training means that our preparation for every game is where it is where it should be and come game day, everyone is ready to perform.
"We don't discount anyone's efforts. The ones that play get the rewards and accolades, but behind the scenes my respect goes to the guys who probably don't get the opportunities they deserve and every day they want to be part of something special and successful and they are willing to make that sacrifice."
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