Ange Postecoglou makes blunt claim about Celtic’s struggles

Celtic needed a late goal from Callum McGregor to rescue a point against St Mirren. They drew 2-2 at home. And the result means that the Hoops have won only one of their past four Premiership games. That is not the kind of run you expect from Ange Postecoglou’s side, who have been pretty relentless throughout the course of the campaign.

Of course, Celtic have already won the league and in the grand scheme of things, these results mean pretty much nothing. At the same time though, one would not have expected this team to take their foot off the gas.

But unfortunately, it looks like that is exactly what has happened. It is easy to point towards the absence of Cameron Carter-Vickers, who is arguably the club’s best players.

But Postecoglou is not ready to do that. As reported by 67 Hail Hail, the Celtic manager said while speaking to BBC Radio Scotland:

"“It was a tough game. St Mirren worked hard and that’s why they are where they are. We never really got to grips with the game, it was a bit of a struggle all the way through for us. It’s fair to say we’ve gone off it a little bit in the last couple of weeks, particularly in the defensive side of the game. When you do that it’s very hard to play the football we want to.“It’s not one player, it’s got nothing to do with Cameron Carter-Vickers. We’ve missed him before, we played Champions League football without Carter-Vickers. That’s the easy thing to look at. That’s not how we view things. We’re not working as hard off the ball as we were prior to winning the title. And when you don’t that’s what happens. You can’t dominate games of football like we did.“We pride ourselves on being relentless and you can’t just be relentless when you have the ball. For us, it’s actually more important we are when we don’t have it – and we haven’t been relentless the last few weeks. It’s natural, but we’ve still got games to play. If that’s your attitude going in it’ll be a struggle. The whole premise of what we do is not to be reactive to circumstances, but to be consistent in what we do.”"

Postecoglou makes blunt claim about Celtic’s struggles

At the end of the day, it is important to not give too much importance to these results. These games mean pretty much nothing in the grand scheme of things with the league title already won.

Thus, it is pretty human for some players to not give their top performance in these games. At the same time though, the season is not over yet. The Hoops still have quite a bit to play for. Namely the treble. They will be taking on Inverness CT in the final of the Scottish Cup next month at Hampden Park. A game they must win at all costs.

The fans would have been hoping for the Hoops to go into that game with all the momentum in the world. Unfortunately, these results are not helping Celtic in that regard. Inverness CT might be a Championship team. But it would be a mistake to take this game lightly.