Postecoglou: Fitness focus will lead to strong Celtic finish

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou hopes his long-term fitness plan will give his side an edge when games go to the wire during the title run-in.

Postecoglou has devised a training programme to target peak fitness for his players during the season finale.

The Hoops have been tested in recent weeks, needing an 86th-minute winner to beat Dundee before being held to a goalless draw by Hibernian and only getting a two-goal cushion against St Mirren with nine minutes left.

They face another difficult task on Sunday against a Livingston side who have kept two clean sheets against Celtic this season and beat Postecoglou's side in West Lothian in September.

Postecoglou said: "I said a while back that the whole idea is that we are at our strongest at the end of the season rather than just trying to hold on.

"We manage our programme that way and we try and get the players to be in the best possible condition for the most important part of the year. In theory that's how we want it to work.

"January was good for us in terms of the players we brought in allowed us to rotate the squad a bit, which means we have got a really healthy group apart from Dave (Turnbull) and Kyogo (Furuhashi), who are out injured. Everybody else is in good condition.

"It allowed me not to over-burden individuals, which we really struggled with in the first half of the season, which I think is why we got so many injuries. We haven't had that in the second part of the season.

"That means we can put some work into them in training, some physical work as well, we can be really strong for that last part of the year, which I think we will have to be.

"You have seen with all the games, they are really tight, and a lot of the games are getting decided late. Us being strong