ANGE Postecoglou believes that strengthening his Celtic squad early will enable his new signings to make an impact during a vital run of January fixtures - but refused to rule out doing more transfer business this month.
Postecoglou has brought in Alistair Johnston, Tomoki Iwata and Yuki Kobayashi and could hand defenders Johnston and Kobayashi their debuts against Rangers in the cinch Premiership match at Ibrox tomorrow afternoon if their international clearance comes through from FIFA in time.
The Parkhead club were transformed by the arrival of Reo Hatate, Daizen Maeda and Matt O’Riley this time last year – they went on a 17 game unbeaten run in the league and reclaimed the Scottish title in May.
READ MORE: Celtic legend Lubomir Moravcik makes move into Slovakian politics
The Greek-Australian coach, whose team is nine points clear at the top of the Premiership and through to the Viaplay Cup semi-final, is hopeful that his trio of new recruits can also make an immediate impression and increase Celtic’s chances of landing silverware.
“The way I saw it was that it worked well for us last year and there was an opportunity there again,” he said.
“When you’re doing business in January, particularly in Europe, then it’s very hard to get it done early. Most clubs that you’re dealing with try and drag it out to the last day. So you are kind of missing out on another month of football.
“The Asian leagues all finish up in October or November. So if you have an interest there it means you can do your business before the January window opens. That allows players to come in and contribute during that month. It’s a pretty important month, there is always a lot of football and important games.
“They have to be the right players for us and with the three we have signed we could get them over early. Tomoki is not in the country yet. We’re hoping he’ll be here early next week and then he will probably need a couple of weeks of work.
“Alistair and Kobayashi have already had a couple of weeks but Tomoki will need a couple of weeks with us. But him coming in early January means that hopefully by the end of the month he will be ready.”
Postecoglou is satisfied with the options that he has in every position and is not anticipating a particularly stressful January transfer window – but he admitted that Celtic could strengthen further if a player he likes becomes available.
READ MORE: Rangers manager's past Old Firm glories are irrelevant against Celtic
“There is no great urgency now,” he said. “I’m really pleased with what we have done so far. That relieved us of any urgent stuff we needed to do. I just felt we needed to bring two or three more in because of what is ahead and what we are trying to build. But the window isn’t even open yet.
“We’ll wait and see. If there is an opportunity to bring somebody in who we think can make us better then we will definitely explore it, but without the sense of urgency we’d have if we hadn’t already got some business done.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel