Ange Doesn’t Sound Like A Worried Man. The Celtic Boss Sounds Well Up For It.

All the talk this week has been of pressure.

The pressure the media and others want to put on our manager and on our club.

The man himself, big Ange, spoke about it at his presser today and he does not sound, to me, like a man about to crack under the strain.

In fact, he sounds a lot, to me, like a guy who is more up for it than ever, who wants fans to enjoy the next few weeks instead of worrying about them.

He talks of us being on “the scariest rollercoaster” imaginable; that’s not a man who is afraid, but a guy who is relishing what is about to happen.

You don’t go on a rollercoaster because you might die; you go on because you know that however thrilling and scary that you’ll come off wanting to go right back on again.

He is loving this, and wants us to love it.

I know what the media was hoping for from Ange; signs that he was cracking.

That is not going to happen.

When Callum McGregor grabbed the players for an impromptu huddle at the end of the cup semi-final last weekend that was him telling them not to let their heads go down and to remember the business in front of us.

Everyone at Celtic is focussed on the task at hand.

We are three wins away from the title and it does not matter what the media writes or goons like Ferguson hope for; if we win the next three matches then it is over and nobody can do anything about that.

Ange has them drilled for it and he doesn’t think heads have gone down.

“I’ve felt all along this year that, every setback we’ve had, and we’ve had a few, that the players have embraced every challenge and I didn’t sense within the group that there was any sense of a hangover from the result when we got back into training,” he said. “They are disappointed, everyone was disappointed, but at the same time they understand that what needs to happen after a result like that is that you have to put your energies in a positive way into the next game … Whether we won or didn’t win last weekend, the process is still the same – we do our analysis, give the guys feedback and we move on pretty quickly.”

That is not a man, nor is this a team, that is feeling stressed.

That is a team and a manager all the more determined to crack on and achieve big things.

The way the media wilfully ignores how much pressure there was on the team to get to where they are now is unreal … that we’ve clawed back a deficit to sit six clear is a sure sign of how this story ends.

Ange has them concentrating on the only thing that matters; three points on Sunday.