Opinion: Celtic boss is correct to expect more from his side

Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou didn’t seem too happy with the Hoops’ performance in the first-half of the Scottish Cup tie against Raith Rovers.

The Hoops were one goal ahead at the break, and eventually ran out winners by 4-0 to book a place in tonight’s quarter-final draw.

Despite being ahead at half-time, the Celtic manager thought his players could have performed better in the first 45 minutes.

“As we saw in the first half today we’ve still got a lot of work to do. My role now is to make sure that they realise their potential. I think there’s more there and we need to keep pushing” he said after the game on Premier Sports, as quoted by the Daily Record.

The Australian’s comments should be welcomed by the Celtic support. The Hoops boss should want standards to be kept high, even though Celtic are on a good run of form, and are currently top of the Premiership.

There is a reason that Celtic may have performed poorly in the first-half against Raith, and that is the fact that the Hoops side that was picked by Postecoglou wasn’t the usual Celtic side that would start a game. A lot of fringe players were selected.

On the other hand though, the fringe players – aside from Liam Scales, who opened the scoring for Celtic – didn’t really make much of an impact in the game, and it wasn’t until Jota came on as a second-half substitute that the Hoops really took control of the game.

The fact that none of the fringe players really grasped the opportunity in front of them might well have annoyed the Celtic boss, and you have to imagine that it will be the ‘regular’ line-up that takes the pitch when the Hoops return to action to face Bodo/Glimt in the Europa League on Thursday night.

The good news is that despite not being convincing