The new manager is here, and due to covid restrictions, he’s decided to stay as he doesn’t fancy the Australian quarantine rules should he choose to head home. Apparently, over there they just don’t let you back in.

He’s met the staff, some of the players and spoken to the support.

Describing a video released by the club, the Record said;

a short clip showed also Postecoglou entering a dining room as he fist-bumped coaches John Kennedy and Gavin Strachan. 

Fifty thousand season book holders had hoped he would go further.

The official website greeted us with the headline;

Ange Postecoglou gets down to business after arriving at Lennoxtown

I’d just like to clarify that no one at Etims works for the official website and any themes they choose to borrow are entirely of their own stealing.

Postecoglou told fans…

“It’s great to be here,” 

“It’s been a tough three weeks to get here but I’m super happy to be here now. ” 

Once he’s met all the players and heard all their whinging it may take him considerably less time to get out of there.

One thing he won’t be short of is advice, and there will be plenty of well informed and even well meaning offers of help from all sorts of people, and the best thing that we can hope for is that he ignores the whole bloody lot of them and starts to look at things for himself.

For example, Leigh Griffiths is telling everyone that he’s about to get a new contract, when he’s done very little over the last four years to justify it.

Ange will want to look at things for himself before listening to any stories about the player, and he will want to know how and why Griffiths went from the free scoring forward to the unfit and unreliable lump that has been frantically running around the training ground in the hope he can skank another couple of years from the club.

Griffiths has so far blamed everyone but himself, and how Ange handles this will perhaps set the store for the rest of his reign.

Looking at the clubs problems from the outside is difficult, I’ve already made my mind up about Griffiths, because I’ve ran out of patience with him.

And thats just one player, Ange has an enormous task rebuilding the team, and I’m not sure he knows quite what he’s getting into.

There are three goalkeepers in the first team squad, two have international experience and the other is Scott Bain. not one of them managed to hold down a first team place last season.

Was that their fault ?

Or did the lack of a settled defence hinder each and every one of them.

Or, and here’s a thought….the only member of the coaching staff to escape criticism last term was Stevie Woods, the goalkeeping coach.

After all, he’s the guy who coached Artur Boruc and Fraser Forster.

Right ?

Or, could it be that he just happened to have two excellent goalkeepers to work with… ?

Thats one for Ange to work out.

The defence is a shambles. On loan players such as Laxalt duffy and the dreadful Kenny were enough reason to abandon the idea of loannees forever, and in Nir Biton , Kris Ajer and Chris Jullien we have again three players that you couldn’t dissect and build a decent one from in Frankensteins lab.

Ajer can’t head a ball, which is a kind of problem for a centre half, Julien can’t avoid injury and Biton has been here for nine years and hasn’t given us a single memorable moment.

Well, not for the right reasons.

That leaves Greg Taylor and Steven Welsh, two players who should, given the right coaching, have a future at Celtic. Yet the support say they’re not good enough.

That’s unless they leave and go on to greater things elsewhere, when it will be Celtic’s fault for letting them go and buying in foreign diddies.

Or borrowing them.

We’ve not even mentioned the midfield yet, which is the same mixture of want aways, can’t be arsed and bloody useless.

Calum MaCGregor and James Forrest, now the old men of the team, might choose to stay. MacGregor is the more likely of the two to leave, ideally they will remain, as some sort of consistency will be required.

Frankly, if we are going to have a clean out, then we might as well throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There will be players right now, however, that will be delighted the old regime has gone.

Ange will have to decide for himself if he can build a team around them.

He will have to look at the coaching, the diets, the sports science and the medical team.

Anyone who took the job would have had the same issue.

Maybe the fact he is from halfway round the world with little local knowledge will help.

But will he have the courage of his convictions ?

There’s a lot of work to be done, and those fist bumps may yet turn into just fists.

I suppose we’d better become supporters again….. now that we have someone who needs support.

Caption from yesterday….

Today