Tonight the Celtic family will be rooting for Ange. He needs it and he deserves it.

Tonight, when Ange Postecoglou leads Spurs into battle against Manchester United in the Europa League final, it won’t just be the fans of the North London club who are backing him.

Up and down Scotland – and in Celtic pubs far beyond – there’ll be people who would ordinarily have no interest in that match beyond simply wanting to see a good game, cheering him on as if he were still in the Parkhead dugout.

Because in many ways, he still is one of us.

There are two reasons for that.

The first is straightforward: he’s a former Celtic manager, and he delivered for us. A treble winner. Five trophies out of six in fact. A manager who brought flair and excitement back to the club. He didn’t just win – he entertained, and he had us believing in something bigger than just results.

The second reason is maybe even more powerful; because in the two years since he left Glasgow, he’s been treated like absolute dirt by people who should know better; a slavering media which was dying to see him fail.

And we recognise that. We remember it happening to him here.

Look at how the English press has treated him.

From the minute he walked in the door at Tottenham, they were sniffy and sceptical. The guy had just walked out of Celtic with five domestic trophies out of six and a style of football that had pundits across Europe praising his philosophy. But in England? “Who’s this guy?” They still didn’t get it.

And when things got hard this season – when Spurs suffered injuries, when the squad’s depth was tested, when his refusal to compromise his principles led to some heavy defeats – the knives came out.

Jonathan Liew of The Guardian, one of the most intelligent football writers around, dismissed his project entirely as “unserious.” Jamie Carragher didn’t even try to hide his disdain, blaming him personally for their slide down the table. It was the exact same sneering attitude that greeted his arrival at Celtic – the old “never heard of him” chorus – only this time on a louder, nastier scale.

And it’s worse because guys like Liew are brilliant writers. It is hard seeming people of that intelligence and insight dismissing our former boss so casually.

The irony is, Ange has already delivered more than most thought possible. He’s taken Spurs to a European final, and he’s done it playing his way.

But that’s not enough for some. He’s expected to win now. Anything less is seen as failure. And in fact, David Hytner, another outstanding Guardian sports writer, posted a piece yesterday which suggested that he should probably still be sacked even if he does manage to win it. That’s not pressure – that’s contempt.

And it’s been coming at Ange from all sides; not only from the hacks but from his own fans, and his own chairman (who has done the square root of nothing to back him in public). So it’s hard not to sympathise.

That’s where we come in.

Celtic fans know what Ange Postecoglou is about. We saw it with our own eyes. We know he’s not perfect – no manager is – but what he brought to Celtic wasn’t just success. It was identity. It was purpose.

It was watching a team that looked like it knew exactly what it wanted to be, week in, week out. That style doesn’t just emerge by magic. It takes work. It takes guts. It takes sticking to your vision when everyone is telling you to chuck it out the window and go pragmatic. And when you win doing that?

It means something. A win for him tonight will mean something.

So yes, we’re backing him tonight, and I write that as a guy who thinks he was foolish ever to go to Spurs in the first place. I write it as a guy who loved watching the big man as a manager here but generally loses interest the minute somebody is no longer working in our house. But I have a soft spot for them all, of course, and for the big guy more than most because he did get it, he did make himself part of the family.

And you know what else? This is still the club of the underdog and the radical, and we have a sense of justice and fairness and we hate seeing good people ground down by the weight of England’s ego machine.

A lot of us have no great love for Spurs, and we certainly don’t care about their recent self-image crisis. But we do care about Ange, and we know that lifting that trophy would be a massive middle finger to those who have doubted him since Day One.

This match isn’t just about silverware. It’s about validation. It’s about belief. It’s about Ange Postecoglou showing the English football elite – the ones who still think the game only started in 1992 – that there’s more than one way to win.

And that just because you don’t look or sound like what they expect it doesn’t mean you’re not the real deal. In short, we want them to learn what the Scottish media already has.

When you see what Ange has had to contend with – the lack of public support from Daniel Levy, the pundits snapping at his heels, the booing fans who want champagne football and instant trophies – it’s impossible not to root for him.

Especially when we remember how some of our own questioned him at the start, only to be eating humble pie six months later as we steamrolled to a league title.

So tonight, we’ll be watching.

Not because it’s Spurs. Not because we care who finishes with what coefficient. But because it’s Ange. Because football has become so transactional, so cynical, so full of fake sentiment and ruthless short-termism that it’s rare to find someone who sticks to what they believe in, even when it would be easier to fold.

Win or lose, he’ll walk back into that dressing room with his head held high. But we want him to win. We need him to win. Because he’s one of the good guys. And in a sport that’s been taken over by the PR men, the oil barons and the data-bros, good guys don’t get too many days like this.

Let’s hope this one goes his way.