Ange Postecoglou reacts to Celtic star’s bizarre claim

With a good strong squad, there will always be some concern over players who don’t start matches as often as others or for those who feature rarely. For example, Celtic saw Moritz Jenz cut short his season-long loan earlier this year, as he ended up moving to Schalke 04 in search of more regular minutes.

Questions were already being asked about Liel Abada, who has been starting less games this time than last season, despite making a significant impact when he comes off the bench on numerous occasions. His second half performance made a significant difference to the Hoops as they turned around a 1-0 deficit at half-time to a 5-1 away win against St Mirren recently.

Abada recently made an unexpected claim about his lack of starts and indicating that there were things behind the scenes that aren’t known publicly. That meant rumours quickly started flying around about his future at Parkhead.

As reported by Sport 5, Abada said:

"“I’m coming up as a substitute, there are things behind it that people don’t know. I don’t want to go into too much detail.”"

Postecoglou reacts to Celtic star’s bizarre claim

Postecoglou did not seem concerned about Abada’s situation though. As reported by Glasgow Live, the Australian manager said

"“I’m not worried about him.”"

Postecoglou further went on to add:

"“He’s fine mate. I just go with how they are playing and Liel is in a great space right now. He’s done very well for us and he can still improve.”"

Abada is certainly very important to this team, even if he is not a starter. James Forrest is ruled out for a while and Daizen Maeda recently suffered a knock when scoring in the league game against Hearts, which kept him out of the Scottish Cup match against the Edinburgh side at Tynecastle Park last weekend.

As a result, even if Abada is not starting regularly, he is getting minutes. And he is expected to get even more over the coming weeks. As long as he makes a contribution, he will have a place in the team. And it is also important to remember that he is still very young, and has a lot of time on his hands to improve and get even better.