Ange Postecoglou won't hesitate to make wholesale changes to Celtic team during busy schedule

Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou insists he won’t shy away from making wholesale changes to his team again, after seeing his side lose to St Mirren last time out.

After starting the season with a settled side and making a strong start to defence of the Premiership title, Postecoglou rotated his squad for the last game before the break as Champion League commitments were added to domestic games to make for a heavy schedule.

The Australian made half a dozen changes for the game in Paisley before the international break but saw Celtic stunned by a 2-0 loss to St Mirren.

Postecoglou is now prep\ring his side for another demanding spell, with players returning from playing for their countries to face a long list of games across three competitions before club football breaks for the World Cup.

The manager says plans have been in place for dealing with the workload and he won’t shy away from making extensive changes to the line-up from game to game.

After revealing that Carl Starfelt is still a couple of weeks away from a return, and Giorgos Giakoumakis and Cameron Carter-Vickers will miss the visit of Motherwell, he said that some changes were to be expected.

“That’s why we’ve got the squad we have, particularly with our schedule over the next month and a half<” Postecoglou explained. “We’re going to get niggles and some guys who are sore here and there.

“That’s why we’ve got the squad we have, to be able to cope with that.

“We’ve known it was going to be like that for a while so you just plan for it. In terms of training and how we built the squad and the way we’ve prepared for what’s 13 games in about 43 days.

“We’ve been planning for a while and the process is just to look at each game and see how people are from a physical and mental standpoint and make decisions as we go along.”

That plan means that Postecoglou won’t rule out rotation on the level seen against St Mirren, and he cautioned against questioning the overall approach after one setback.

“Every decision we make will be around what team we think will be able to best perform on the day,” the manager said.

“If that means making a number of changes then we make a number of changes. If not then we don’t.

“If you use a result of a game to question everything you do then you’ll go nuts in this game. Every game is the same for us: win, lose or draw we look at the performance. We understand why we didn’t perform on the day, we give the feedback to the players and move on.,

“There’s nothing in one result that changes my outlook or approach or what we want to achieve as a team.”