Ange Postecoglou’s departure to Tottenham Hotspur has come as an unwelcome surprise to many, and while it's tempting to move on, in the words of Maya Angelou, “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.”  

This column will review Postecoglou’s tenure through the lens of the Expected Trophies framework laid out here in July 2021. As a brief summary, the framework is designed to try and conceptualise an ability to attribute football club performance, with relative wage bills paramount, followed by things like the quality of player recruitment, and then quality of coaching. 

To begin this review, here is a radar of a broad range of performance metrics from league games, comparing the entirety of Postecoglou’s reign with the high-performing 2019-2020 Celtic team:

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Overall, the comparison falls in a ‘very close’ range, with Postecoglou’s vintage differing a bit in style. For example, his teams were a bit more possession-heavy, and also played a higher defensive line, as reflected in the defensive distance metric. My personal analysis and bias are and have been, that Postecoglou is a materially better manager than Neil Lennon. However, this sort of comparison could draw such a conclusion into question!

Here is a listing of the 2019-2020 squad and players for Postecoglou’s tenure, with the top 15 in minutes played from highest to lowest:

With the relative wage bills comparable for the two periods and overall performance levels also similar, we can see from something like average on-ball value potential evidence that the 2019-2020 squad may have had a higher talent level.

Considering that several of the players who played higher volumes of minutes, such as Forster, Ajer, Edouard, Christie, and Frimpong have gone on to play meaningful minutes subsequent to that season in top five leagues, I think the thesis is a reasonable one. In addition, the player 16th in league minutes played for 2019-2020 was Mohamed Elyounoussi, who has subsequently played materially in the English Premier League.

Through the lens of the expected trophies framework, my theory is that Postecoglou’s relative advantage in managerial talent and skills helped the recent Celtic vintages compensate for what has been a drop in relative squad talent. Also, I would argue that while talent levels have likely been lower, recent recruitment has been more coherent, with some notable exceptions such as James McCarthy, relative to the style of play deployed by Postecoglou.

This theory of performance attribution is also supported by the nature of performances in European competitions over the two periods. Obviously, the 2019-2020 team was able to compete with the likes of Lazio and Rennes, with a significant assist via solid shot stopping from Fraser Forster, while group stage performances under Postecoglou’s over two seasons were filled with significant periods of Celtic being competitive in the middle third of the pitch while lacking in both final thirds.

While just four games in each campaign, using Wyscout’s xG model, Celtic averaged a -0.41 in non-penalty xG difference versus Rennes and Lazio, while this season was +0.25 on average versus RB Leipzig and Shakhtar Donetsk.

The good news when viewing Postecoglou’s departure through the lens of expected trophies is that Celtic’s fundamental financial position is excellent, which suggests that there may be room to increase the wage bill and have a significant transfer budget to support whomever the manager ends up being.

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With another season of Champions League group money secured, along with potential player sales such as Kyogo Furuhashi, Liel Abada, Jota, and/or Matt O’Riley, this should provide ample resources to transition the squad.

However, there is potentially bad news with this analytical framework. Who will be in charge of identifying and securing the talent necessary to both replace material departures, as well as upgrade overall squad quality in order to become more competitive for European aspirations? Is there any senior staff due to remain at Celtic who have a proven track record of talent identification?

With so many of the players recruited during Postecoglou’s tenure obviously derived from his personal experiences and knowledge, the remainder of the player recruitment has been fairly mixed. For every Matt O’Riley and Liel Abada, there has been a James McCarthy and Liam Shaw.

Will the plan be to revert back to trying to tap Manchester City Group’s surplus talent development? Has the two seasons under Postecoglou afforded the club time to build out a material upgrade in talent identification?

While Celtic will enjoy hard-earned and well-deserved financial advantages for the upcoming season, questions about the “who” and “how” the club make material progress with the player trading model remain paramount.

Postecoglou’s tenure did not display much evidence in this regard. How these questions are answered this summer may be more important than the identity of the next manager.