ANGE Postecoglou tonight outlined his thinking behind taking off Jota in Celtic’s agonising Europa League defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in the Bay Arena.

The Portuguese winger performed brilliantly for the visitors in the Group G game Germany and put them in front with a well-taken second-half strike.

However, Postecoglou, whose men conceded twice in the last eight minutes to lose 3-2 and miss out on the last 16 of the competition, felt replacing him and his fellow front men James Forrest and Kyogo Furuhashi late on would lift his side’s energy levels.  

“He is going well,” he said. “We took him off because him and James in the front three worked really hard.

“I felt we needed some extra energy particularly in the wide areas and we had two players on the bench to do that. I felt it was a good time to make the substitutions.”

Postecoglou added: “You saw he is playing against a very good team, good opponents, he wasn’t able to dominate the way he usually does. He just needs to keep working at it. He’s a young guy and he’s still learning.

“He took his goal really well, which again showed his quality. But there are still a lot of areas he needs to develop and the more we push him to play the football we do the more he will develop. He wants to. He knows he still has a lot to learn.”