Celtic fans are like hospital visitors about to lose a loved one but must stop to assess the Ange legacy - Hugh Keevins

The Celtic supporters are like hospital visitors who have been asked to gather in the family room, having been told to ready themselves for news they’ve been dreading about a loved one.

Now, as well as bracing themselves for what may or may not be the details of Ange Postecoglou’s departure for Tottenham Hotspur, they have one other thing to do to tidy up their affairs. If the worst happens, the fans need to examine the contents of their hearts and minds to assess how they will remember, and judge, the man who’s left them for another club.

When cherished personalities leave Celtic, it’s customary for supporters to console themselves with the idea that person’s departure was as the direct result of a media-based conspiracy. A cold-blooded, malevolent strategy to undermine the club and bolster their greatest rivals, the team across the road on the other side of the city.

The reality is entirely different. The bottom line is managers do what they can, win what they can, but can’t worry themselves with what people think about them when they go. Ange isn’t being driven away. Results certainly aren’t dictating he has to go away. If he goes it’s because, ultimately, he wants to get away. What’s the point of having a mind if you can’t change it?

Postecoglou is allowed to do that, and so are the fans. The manager arrived from Yokohama as the classic example of the unknown quantity who went on to become idolised after proving that premature judgements can be totally inaccurate in the final analysis. The fans who said they’d never heard of him and couldn’t even pronounce his name properly now know better.

Ange last night joined the litany of managerial greats at Celtic by becoming the fifth member of a Treble-wining elite. A