Ange Postecoglou tells Celtic players to improve every time they play

Celtic may have swept aside Rangers with ease on Wednesday night but manager Ange Postecoglou is still looking for improvement.

A remarkably one-sided first half at Parkhead saw the Hoops storm into a 3-0 lead through a Reo Hatate double and a goal from Liel Abada – and it would have been even more emphatic had Gers keeper Allan McGregor not been in top form.

The Light Blues could not recover and the comprehensive victory leapfrogged Celtic one point ahead of the champions at the top of the cinch Premiership.

Postecoglou, on the day he was named cinch Premiership manager of the month for January – the second such award since he became Celtic manager in the summer – revealed a philosophy which appeared somewhat ominous.

He said: “We go into every game, whether that is Wednesday night or on Sunday, saying to the boys, ‘okay, the main objective will be to play our best game of the season today – let’s play better than we have played so far’.

“So you are not thinking about how we played in the last game, that it was good and we want to repeat that.

“We don’t want to repeat that, you want to improve on that.

“It doesn’t always work out like that, sometimes there is a dip in form, sometimes the opposition can stop you from playing at those levels but in terms of the intent, of course you want to improve.

“Matt O’Riley is three games into his Celtic career, Reo Hatate, Giorgos Giakoumakis – most of these guys are at the beginning of a new cycle, a new way of playing so there has to be improvement, we have to improve, absolutely.

“If we want to be a team we want to be, even for this year, if we want to be successful, we have to be better than we were the other night.”

Ahead of the trip to Motherwell on Sunday, the former