STREN TWEA NGTH KNESS
Big risk for Ange to tear up Celts t
IF the first half of the season has taught us anything it’s surely that underestimating Ange Postecoglou seems like a dangerously brainless business.
Given the awful state that Celtic had got themselves into before his arrival, the Australian has worked a minor miracle in laying down such sturdy foundations in his first few months in charge.
As a matter of fact, with one trophy in the bag already and a genuine title challenge well and truly up and running, Postecoglou has achieved more than enough in a very short space of time to entirely vindicate his appointment from left field.
No matter what transpires over the rest of the campaign, now that the ball is about to come back out of the cupboard, it does feel as if he’s already proven himself to be the real deal with the sheer volume of work he has put in at Celtic’s Lennoxtown HQ.
But, as the old saying goes, there’s a fine line between genius and madness and Postecoglou might be about to put that cliche to the test.
In the recruitment of Daizen Maeda, Yosuke Ideguchi and Reo Hatate, Celtic’s high-tariff manager appears to be rolling the dice in typically bullish style.
One look at his team sheet tonight, when Shaun Maloney takes his Hibs side across the M8 for the big restart, could very well offer up a fascinating insight to Postecoglou’s intentions between now and May and just how much he is prepared to gamble.
Is he about to throw the baby out with the bathwater in order to get his new arrivals up and running as quickly as possible?
Or does he plan on drip feeding them into his starting line-up more gradually over the coming weeks and months rather than making wholesale changes all at once?
If his first few months at the helm are anything to go by, then Postecoglou hardly seems like a man averse to risk-taking.
If he truly believes his three Japanese new boys can hit the ground running in the way their compatriot Kyogo Furuhashi already has in the first half of the campaign, then why wouldn’t he want to fast track them straight into his starting XI at the first opportunity?
The obvious problem here is that Celtic have little or no margin for error where this season’s title race is concerned. One false step at this point could prove critical to his chances of taking Rangers’ crown away at the first attempt.
The irony is, had Postecoglou not made such a highly impressive start to his career in Glasgow’s east end, he might have been better able to blood his new signings as a job lot.
But now that he has hauled this team to within striking distance of the champions at the top of the table, he could stand accused of trying to mend something which wasn’t really broken in the first place, should he do too much too soon and end up frittering away crucial league points in the process. It also must be noted the impact Giovanni van Bronckhorst has made on the other side of Glasgow’s divide has helped to pile even more pressure on Postecoglou’s decision-making at this precarious moment in the top-flight battle. Where Rangers had got off to a flaky start to their title defence under
Steven Gerrard, the Dutchman’s arrival appears to have underpinned their credentials all over again.
By rattling off seven straight Premiership wins before the winter shut down, van Bronckhorst has made an immaculate start to his Ibrox reign. This, remember, was a Rangers side which hadn’t managed four Premiership wins in a row under the previous manager, while Gerrard’s attention span was busy wandering across Hadrian’s Wall.
Had it not been for Aston Villa’s intervention, Postecoglou might have been in an even more comfortable position, rather than sitting six points off the pace in the knowledge that one false move now might prove fatal to his hopes of going the distance.
While Postecoglou must now ponder on the wisdom or otherwise of shaking up his side, van Bronckhorst has no such interest in trying to reinvent the wheel at Rangers.
Having sacrificed Nathan Patterson, van Bronckhorst has kept the wolves from the door where his most important players are concerned. There is no financial compulsion on him now to sanction any further sales should bids come in for the likes of Joe Aribo, Glen Kamara or Ryan Kent before the window closes.
In fact, his biggest problem will be finding a way of doing without Aribo in the short term or for as long as his star man is representing Nigeria in the Africa Cup of Nations.
With two wins from their opening two Group D games, it seems very likely that Aribo will be hanging about in Cameroon for some time.
If the Super Eagles make it all the way to the final on February 6, then van Bronckhorst will be lucky to have him back and available in time to face Hibs at Ibrox three days later.
All of which means Aribo could miss at least five top-flight matches, starting tomorrow at Pittodrie and including the next Old Firm showdown at the start of next month.
The good news for van Bronckhorst is that he has no shortage of options even if Aribo will be difficult to replace.
With the likes of Ianis Hagi, Scott Arfield and Kent, he has tried and tested ways of filling the void that AFCON has created.
The lesser spotted Juninho Bacuna is another who could come into consideration.
But while van Bronckhorst will be wrestling with how best to tweak his starting line-up on the road up to the north east, Postecoglou must be giving serious consideration to conducting a Far East overhaul midway through the campaign.
Safe and steady may very well win the race but that just doesn’t seem like the big Aussie’s style.