ANGE POSTECOGLOU insists he will not waste time convincing players to stay at Celtic.
The new boss remains totally focused on the job at hand and what he can influence as he wants to continue his rebuild of the team that performed so catastrophically last season to complete their first trophyless campaign in 11 years.
Kristoffer Ajer has got his wish and departed Parkhead for Brentford with £13.5million heading into the Hoops coffers.
Odsonne Edouard continues to be linked with a move and news of Brighton being interested was revived today after CQN brought the news earlier in the week.
Postecoglou is adamant the French striker is not making waves and said: “I’ve had a chat to Odsonne and for me what’s more important is he training well and presenting himself in games well, so while he’s here I’m treating him as a Celtic player.
FRENCH FANCY…Odsonne Edouard’s future at Celtic is uncertain.
“If that changes in the near future, we’re making contingency plans for him, but I’m not going to waste too much time trying to convince people to stay or worrying about what’s going to happen.
“There’s too much to do on what I need to influence right now.”
Postecoglou has overseen the £12.2million arrivals of Israeli winger Liel Abada, Japanese striker Kyogo Furuhashi and Swedish central defender Carl Starfelt, but he is anxious for more new faces in the forthcoming weeks.
Abada made a scoring debut against FC Midtjylland on Tuesday, but the other new Bhoys are still in quarantine before they can be paraded at Parkhead. The former Australia international gaffer admitted he has been frustrated by the lack of movement.
STRIKING DEBUT…Liel Abada made a marvellous first impression.
Postecoglou, speaking to Sky Sports News, continued: “We still need to do more. That’s one area where we are chipping away and haven’t had the visible results.
“We’ve signed Liel Abada who came in and had a fantastic debut. We’ve signed Carl Starfelt and Kyogo Furuhashi, but they’re not here at the moment, that’s the challenges of the world we live in.
“It’s frustrating and we’d love to have them here already, the others we’re working on completing a big quicker. It’s not through a lack of wanting or hard work, we’re endeavouring to get there and we’re chipping away and hopefully over the next two or three weeks we’ll benefit from it.
“I’m involved in everything. That’s the nature of me as a person. Anything I’m going to take responsibility for I’m going to make sure I have input in and have a say.
ALL SMILES…Ange Postecoglou is not wasting time in making his mark at Celtic.
“That’s the important thing and it’s part of people getting to know me that they understand I want to be involved in everything and be in charge of everything, but they also know I’ll take responsibility, good or bad for the outcomes.”
He added: “I’ve avoided talking about specific targets for that reason, we have multiple targets in every position because it’s challenging right now to get deals done.
“Whether it’s because of Covid restrictions or because it’s early in the window, so if I was to say we were after a certain player and we didn’t get him I’d hate to think people would think they are plan B.
“That’s not the case because we’ve got three plan As running concurrently in the positions we need players and for me it’s about getting one of those identified into the squad and into training as quickly as possible.
“Right-back is an area we don’t have a lot of depth, so it’s one of the key areas, but there are other positions we want players.”
