ANGE Postecoglou tonight predicted that Reo Hatate will get even better and insisted his Celtic side is still not the finished article after an emphatic win over Rangers at Parkhead that secured top spot in the cinch Premiership table.
A Hatate double and a Liel Abada strike in the first-half clinched a deserved 3-0 triumph over the defending Scottish champions and first place in the league.
Postecoglou, who was missing Nir Bitton, Kyogo Furuhashi, Yosuke Ideguchi, Tom Rogic and David Turnbull, admitted the win was one of the sweetest of his 25 year managerial career.
But the Greek-Australian coach stated that his dominant team can improve even further and warned there is much more to come from new star Hatate.
“I am very proud of the lads,” he said. “I thought our first-half was outstanding. We scored three goals, but the football we played was brilliant.
“We could have had more. Allan McGregor was outstanding. Second half we had to defend a bit more, but we showed we can defend if we need to.
“Full credit to the players. It was a big game. We knew the consequences. There’s been pressure on us all along. I thought they handled it superbly.
“I think the key is just to set the momentum and tempo. We want to have the initiative in games and whether that’s getting a goal early or putting them under pressure, that’s the kind of football team we want to be. That’s good in theory but you need to do that in the big games and I thought we did that today.”
Postecoglou was particularly pleased with the display of Hatate, the Japanese midfielder who he only brought in to Celtic during the January transfer window.
“He was great,” he said. “It’s hard pressed for me to single out people because I thought the whole side was outstanding in the first 45 minutes. But it was good for Reo to get a couple of goals.
“We know he’s got quality. He’ll get better. It’s his third game. You can see he’s nowhere near the levels of fitness required. It’s great for him to get his goals.
“We’re not the finished article. We keep saying the same things. We’ve changed the whole team. Guys are coming back at different times. We’ve got some really quality players yet to come back. We have to be stronger, we want to be stronger. We want to be better."
Asked about going top of the Premiership, Postecoglou said: “I think it’s a sign of the progression. We lost three of our first six. Everybody knows how the Scottish Premiership works, we couldn’t afford to not get out of that pretty quickly and almost be perfect after that.
“We’ve been under pressure for a long time but the players aren’t focused on that. The focus is on playing our football.”
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