ANGE POSTECOGLOU has told his Celtic players not to take their powers of recovery for granted, as he warned them that it will take a huge effort to recover from their Hampden heartache in order to clinch the Premiership title.
The Celtic manager has been full of praise for his men over the course of the season for the manner in which they have reacted to moments of adversity, but he knows that their Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to Rangers will be their biggest test of character to date.
He has faith that his players will bounce back yet again in the remaining five games of the league season, starting with the visit to face Ross County on Sunday, but has told them they will have to fight every inch of the way for the right to be crowned champions – as he feels they deserve to.
“The road to success is not downhill, mate,” Postecoglou said. “It requires effort every single step of the way.
“Sometimes you’ll stumble and we’ve stumbled a few times this year as a group, and we’ve managed to bounce back quickly.
“That’s what we’ve got to do again, but just because it’s happened in the past doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in the future.
“What you do know is that we’re capable of it, and we’ve used it the right way in the past, and we use this disappointment in the right way for next week.
“This is just another [challenge]. We’ve had quite a lot of setbacks this year and we’ve got to use the disappointment of today to fuel what’s left in terms of the season.
“We’ve got five games to become champions, so we have to go out there and perform well in every one of those games, win those games, and hopefully if that happens then the players will get the rewards I think they deserve for their performances this season.”
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