Ange Postecoglou has hailed Celtic star Greg Taylor's tenacity and his ability to show that he was willing to fight for his place in the Hoops first team.
The Aussie brought in Argentine Alexandro Bernabei from FC Lanus in the summer for £3.5 million and he was expected to challenge Taylor for the left-back starting jersey.
However, Taylor's irresistible form has seen Bernabei relegated to the role of spectator in all three of Celtic's Premiership matches this season.
Portuguese superstar Jota namechecked Taylor after last weekend's sparkling 5-0 win over Kilmarnock and admitted that he didn't get enough praise for the role he performs in the team.
Postecoglou challenged Taylor to raise his playing levels again and heralded his attitude and application in training and insists that the Scotland internationalist has survived where others have failed.
The 56-year-old said: "For every footballer, their journey is never sort of linear in that it starts at a low base and finishes at a high base. You have got your ups and downs and sometimes you learn from times when you have to struggle. If you don't have resilience and tenacity because at some point in your career you'll get tested and for a lot of players it is a recurring theme in their careers but it is your ability to overcome that allows you to take your football career on an upward trajectory. All players want to take their careers to the highest level but I think too often players think that it is a smooth ascent and it never is.
"You have got to go through ups and downs and you have to show resilience and you have got to convince people and you have got to prove yourself all the time. That never changes. My experience with Greg has only been over the last 12 months and from the moment I arrived he is one of the few who stayed on. From the start, he was an eager learner and a hard worker in training and they are the main characteristics that I look at.
READ MORE: Ange Postecoglou's Celtic Q+A in full
"There is at times a misconception about the kind of players that would fit into my system there are very few players who wouldn't fit into the kind of football that I want to play. There is not a footballer on the planet who does not want to play this kind of football where you have the ball and be dominant and those kinds of things. Apart from their skillset, the key criteria for us, is that they are coachable and that part of their learning capacity is being resilient.
"It's a tough road to take but Greg has got that and the challenge for him now is to keep improving and to keep getting better. He is still a young man there are still areas of his game he will want to improve and I know he can and my role and the club's role is to make sure the environment keeps pushing all our players to be the best they can be."
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