Ange Postecoglou Celtic Q+A in full: Turnbull and Jota back, Forrest out and why games now carry 'extra edge'

Just an update on your team news?

Jota and Liel Abada are all good. They've trained all week. They obviously missed Monday night but it wasn't anything too serious but they're all good. David Turnbull is available. He's trained the last 10 days so he's available. The other one not available is Jamesy Forrest, he pulled up a bit sore from the other night - nothing too serious but he'll miss tomorrow.

It'll be good to have David Turnbull back - he was a big player for you in the first half of the season...

He was fantastic for us first half of the year and it was disappointing for him that he got a fairly significant injury that has kept him out for a while but he's worked hard in rehab and I know he's itching to get back out there. He's been training really well last seven-10 days. I probably went a bit conservative with him, could have maybe thrown him in last week but watching him train he's ready to go and, as you say, I think he'll be important for us. He is a quality player he's a goal threat, is good on set-pieces and I think he has something to add to our team.

Callum McGregor was saying how he's embracing this run-in with the big games coming up. I just wondered how beneficial it is to have someone like that who's been through the course and distance at the helm in your dressing room as you try to go for the title?

As I said before, he's one of the few here that sort of has been in this situation before but, even for him, it's the first time he's been in that situation as a captain so for him it's it's a new experience. And I think all these things are good, you know, all these things are why we're involved in football- to make sure that at the end of the season, we're vying for honours. It's up to the whole group now to embrace that challenge and I'm sure Callum, as he has all year, will be leading from the front.

Will Kyogo (Furuhashi) be available, if all things go to plan, immediately after the international break?

Yeah, not sure. We'll just wait and see. I said a while back, if you go by timelines, Dave got injured before Kyogo. So you can read into that what you like, but again, without putting any sort of timeframes on it he's working through his rehab and I'm sure he'll be available soon.

You're playing first this weekend ahead of Rangers playing on Sunday with the chance to go six points clear. How big an incentive is that and how much do you use that when you're giving your team talk to the players, especially going into the international break?

Zero. I don't look at other fixtures and I don't look at other results. What concerns me is what we do. That's what we've done all year and that's what we'll continue to do. You know what happens at the end of this round, in terms of the points and how the table looks, well there's only one fixture we can control and that's ours. If we get our three points then we know what we're going to be and it's for the others to find their points. But it has zero relevance to our mindset and what we're trying to achieve.

You spoke last week about the importance of international football and how passionate you are about it, but as a club manager, does the next week bring some apprehension for you in hoping that all your players return back with a full bill of health?

I'm still the same person who made this statement last week. I haven't changed, I believe in it. I mean, you always worry that your players go away but they could be here and get injured. I think it adds to the players' development. I think it's it adds to the way they feel about themselves when they represent their country. A lot of our guys they're still in the infancy of their international careers. And I think every time they challenge themselves in that arena, playing and training with different players, I only see it as a positive.

The drawbacks for us are some of our players have to travel a fair way - that's the one you're kind of more conscious of, rather than worrying about injuries, it's that they get good recovery when they get back into club mode. But yeah, like I said, I only see it as a positive. I know other managers have a different sort of perspective to it but my view, irrespective of whether I was a national team manager or not, has always been there. I think international football actually adds to a player's whole sort of all-round sort of person and player that he is.

Ross County at the weekend - it was a tough away fixture up at Dingwall just before Christmas last year. What do you expect when they come to Celtic Park on Saturday?

Yeah, it was a tough game. We went down to 10 men on the night so we had to fight our way through that and we managed to get an important three points. I think we were fairly depleted in terms of the team that day if I remember correctly. But it'll be another tough test for us but they're all tough tests at the moment, every game has got its own unique challenges. They are in good form but Livingston were in good form too, what's important is what we bring and our form has been pretty consistent. When we bring the energy and the tempo to our football that makes it difficult for oppositions then it gives us a chance for success.

Callum says feels the responsibility as a captain to continue the tradition of replicating success at the club. Is that something that you speak to the players about at all?

I'm not sure what context Callum's talking about but I think we've all said pretty consistently that, if you're representing a football club, you're expected to be challenging for honours every year. That's part of what you sign up for. I don't think you sign for this club and accept that you're going to go through a season without having success and there won't be blowback from it. If you do have success, what's expected after you've had success is to have more success, that's just the football club. It's always been. I think the players have shown that so far that they're embracing that, they won a trophy already this year, but I don't think anything's tailed off - if anything that gave us some impetus to want to win more. We get an opportunity over the course the next couple of months to add to that.

What sort of mental challenges do the squad face during a time like this?

What we've tried to do and obviously, as you get closer to the end of the season and things get decided, is we've tried to block out the external noise. We try to block out what perceptions were over whether we're going well or we're not going well and just focus that the task at hand. Every game has been a challenge for us, we had a poor start to the season so we kind of knew after that 'okay, we've we've really got to knuckle down and be perfect almost for the rest of the year if we're going to challenge in the competitions we're in' so the key to it for us is now just to continue on that road, you know, not to get too distracted, not to look too far ahead, not to worry about consequences of every challenge.

Just know that, if we approach it the same way that we have so far, every game we've played, we've given ourselves a chance of success and that's it. We just need to continue to do that. The supporters don't have to do that. The supporters are allowed to get excited. They're allowed to get apprehensive. They're allowed to get nervous. You know, they want success as badly as we do. We've got to be a little bit different in our mindset.

Last week, we saw the introduction of Rocco Vatta and Ben Summers to first-team training - has it been good to have that seamless transition with a number of players going between the first team and the B team, and how good an experience is that for these young players ahead of games like this weekend's against Rangers B?

Yeah, look, it's important because, you know, they have to feel like the window of opportunity is there for them. It's one thing to be doing well at B team level or under-18s but ultimately their biggest reward is knowing that an opportunity exists for them. So whenever we can we bring up young guys who we feel deserve to train with the first team and given that taste of it as a bit of a reward, but also show them that the opportunity exists for those who excell at the level below us.

We've given opportunities to a number of guys from the B team, others have come in and trained with us but it's really important. We need to make our young players feel that there is a reward for them if they continue to do the right things and play good football and the ultimate reward for them is for us to show them that you will get noticed, that the opportunity does, that you won't get ignored and there isn't a blockage there for them. Hopefully, they train here then they go back and they're excited and the guys they're training with are excited for them and also want to taste it themselves. I think it just feeds into itself because it'll always be an important part of our football club. You know, we need to be a club that produces our own talent and providing opportunity I think is the key to that.

Looking ahead to April, do you feel any pressure about how decisive that could be for the season?

No, we've still got a pretty important game Saturday - then I'm excited that we're in the position we're in. The end of the season could have looked a lot differently if we weren't contesting all this, being in the position we are at the moment. That's where I think it would be tough for me as a manager if we were going into the final couple of months of the season and we weren't challenging for anything so from my perspective it's exciting but, as I said before, our focus is squarely on tomorrow's game because if we don't get tomorrow's game right then that changes the context of everything else. That's where my focus lies.

After we get over tomorrow we've got a couple of weeks with the international window to get some work into some players. I think it'll be good for our international players to get away from this environment and sort of switch away from the constant club football environment and then hopefully they come back really fresh and ready to go for the final part of the season.

In tomorrow's game, do you think there may be an extra edge with Ross County there still fighting for a top-six place?

Yeah, absolutely. But I think it was similar with Livingston. I think it was similar with the cup quarter-final on Monday night. All these games have got a bit of an edge, there is massive rewards for all the clubs involved and that's why it's really important for us that we don't go into any game dismissing the challenger that's before us. They're playing some good football, they've got good results. They've got some threats in the front half of the field. So we've got to be on it tomorrow and make sure that we bring the same energy and intensity we have in recent weeks.

I've been really happy with the way we've gone into games and addressed the challenges we've had, especially the last two or three have been in difficult conditions away from home and the players have handled it really well. Back at home, we've got to make sure we bring the best football we can to make sure we put pressure on the opposition.