20 March 2023

Kenny Dalglish: Why would Ange Postecoglou go to English club facing the drop?

20 March 2023

Kenny Dalglish believes Ange Postecoglou will be in no rush to swap his Celtic “adventure” for a relegation battle in the English Premier League.

The highly regarded Hoops boss has been linked with vacancies at Leeds, Everton and Crystal Palace recently as sides in the danger zone down south have opted to change their manager mid-season.

Postecoglou, who took over at Celtic in 2021, has persistently played down the talk of an imminent departure, and Dalglish – the club’s former striker and director of football – feels competing for honours in Glasgow will be more appealing to the Australian than fire-fighting in England.

“There’s no background to it,” Dalglish said. “He’s done brilliantly at Celtic and it’s attracted people from down south to say ‘come down here’. But are you trying to say Celtic’s not as big an adventure as some of the clubs that were allegedly interested in him?

“Why would he go down to the Premier League and get relegated or to a team threatened by relegation? He’d rather be at Celtic playing to win trophies.”

Although he feels Postecoglou will be content at Celtic, Dalglish believes any English clubs looking for a new boss would be “stupid” not to take note of his work at Parkhead, where he has won three domestic trophies from a possible four since taking the reins.

“When you’re doing well there’s always somebody else interested, and so they should be,” he said.

“What he’s done for Celtic has been brilliant. If we know what he’s done, so do all the clubs in England. Whether they’re attracted to him or not is another thing, but surely they will appreciate what he’s done. But even if he was asked, I don’t know if he’d go.”

Celtic took just two points from six games in a Champions League group that included Real Madrid, Shakhtar Donetsk and RB Leipzig earlier this season, and Dalglish believes that they will be better equipped to challenge in Europe’s elite competition next term.

“Ange has brought in three or four players in January and it looks like he’s giving them a run-in until the end of the season,” he said. “They’ve produced a tune for him so they’re probably stronger squad-wise now than they were last year.

“If they get into the Champions League, they’ll put a good show on. If you look at the games they had this season, they were better than Real Madrid in the first half and ended up getting well beaten. It was similar in the other games.

“They were better than Leipzig in the first half but couldn’t score. The team and Ange have had good experience of it and they’ll be looking forward to it next year.”

:: Kenny Dalglish was promoting Viaplay’s live and exclusive coverage of Scotland v Cyprus and Scotland v Spain. Viaplay is available to stream from viaplay.com or via your TV provider on Sky, Virgin TV and Amazon Prime as an add-on subscription.

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