FORMER Rangers defender Alan Hutton has recalled the occasion when he was lauded by a Celtic manager – after the entire Ibrox first team had blanked him.
Hutton first encountered Ange Postecoglou when he was working as a television pundit at the League Cup final between the Glasgow clubs at Hampden back in the 2022/23 season and the Greek-Australian was in charge at Parkhead.
He was amazed when Postecoglou made a beeline for him before kick-off in the showpiece match and introduced himself - as the members of his old side walked past him without saying a word.
Read more:
The SFA Hall of Fame member was interested to know what kind of player new Celtic right-back Alistair Johnston was as he had never seen the Canadian internationalist, who had only arrived in Scotland the previous month, in action.
Hutton was also astonished when the one-time Australia manager compared his January signing to him and admitted he has been a fan of the charismatic coach - who is currently preparing for his second season in charge of another of his old clubs, Spurs – ever since.
Even though he found it difficult to watch all of the success which Postecoglou enjoyed during his time in the East End.
“As Ally [McCoist] once said, I would have driven him to the airport when he was going!” he said. “But I genuinely liked the guy. Honestly, he was such a lovely guy. I worked with him a couple of times with Premier Sports.
“Before the League Cup final a couple of seasons ago, he came out with his team he was obviously concentrating on his team. But he came straight over to me and said, ‘Alan, how are you doing? Nice to meet you’.
“By the way, I had never spoken to him before this. I thought, ‘Alright!’ The Rangers team just walked by me and never said anything."
Read more:
-
Premier Sports Cup quarter-final draw: When is it & can I watch?
-
'We had them rocking' - Proud Robinson reflects on St Mirren Euro loss
Hutton continued: “I started speaking to him about Alistair Johnston, who had just come to the club to replace Josip Juranovic.
“I said to him, ‘What is he like?’ He said, ‘Alan, he’s just like you. He likes to get up and down, he’s aggressive’. I thought, ‘How on earth does this guy know me?’.
“He took that time out of his day, which was such a big occasion, to come over and talk to me at that moment. I thought, ‘I love this guy, but I should really hate him at this moment in time’. When he left and joined Tottenham I thought, ‘It’s alright, I can like him now!’.”
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