Celtic's Ange Postecoglou on being 'pretty even' with Rangers, getting clocked in Glasgow, and his relationship with 'Gio'

Within a month of his first derby experience against Rangers ending in a 1-0 defeat at Ibrox, Ange Postecolgou was prompted to question a “weird” obsession.

The Celtic manager was left bemused by the rush to draw hard and fast conclusions over the destination of the title owing to the six-point gap that then existed between his side and their bitterest rivals.

As he prepares to guide his team in another instalment of Scottish football’s highest octane, and interest-generating match-up - which will bring Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s team to the east end of Glasgow on Wednesday - he believes the sentiment he expressed back then was misconstrued. Before his first Rangers test, Postecoglou was at pains to stress the requirement to end his club’s winless run in the fixture, which now stretches to seven games, to realise his Celtic ambitions. The 56-year-old maintains he has never failed to appreciate why so much store is placed in the relative performances of the only two genuine challengers for the championship.

"It wasn't so much the obsession about the league table [I was referring to back then], it was the obsession about actually calling the league I was talking about,” he said. “And even at the moment there aren't going to be any trophies handed out at the end of the game [on Wednesday]...unless I'm mistaken or have misread something. I get it if there's a really big gap there and it's almost impossible to change the fortunes, but they were calling the league back in October, that was kind of unusual. I understand the positions of the teams and the points accrued are very important. I get why people are talking about it but I just felt they wanted to call the end result way too early.

“It’s unlikely there will be a