7 sworn secrets of Ange at Celtic as insider pulls back the curtain on the Power of Postecoglou

Ange Postecoglou used an AI company to predict which players would get injured at Celtic - and still takes his sports science seriously.

That's according to Anton McElhone who became a trusted advisor of Postecoglou's at the Hoops. McElhone was a top sport scientist at Parkhead having been brought in in 2021 as part of a football department revamp that restored them to their status as Scottish football dominators after the collapse of the 10-in-a-Row dream.

He left the club in 2023 but remains in a unique position to offer an insight into what life was like under Postecoglou. In a revealing interview on the BBC's Monday Night Club podcast, McElhone was quizzed by Chris Sutton and Mark Chapman on Ange's deployment of sport science, which is a hot button issue in the Scottish game. Rangers boss Philippe Clement has come under fire for leaning too heavily on the data to inform his team selections. But Postecoglou wasn't shy in listening to the numbers either.

McElhone said: "At Celtic, we had an AI company called Zone7. We'd put in all our match and training data and it would give us estimates and predictions of the risk factor for certain players. We'd use that on a daily basis. Look at the facts: 'Is this player robust, does he have the experience?' If it was something very extreme, you would speak to the manager. But you don't go to the manager every day with who could be injured. Because these are all clouds. The exact amount of injuries that get prevented, you'll never know.

"There are factors that can help you tell. Previous injury is a big factor, so is age. Players like Filipe Jota who came in, the most games he'd played on loan was 18 games (over a season). But within three months at Celtic, he'd already played his