A comment made by the former Celtics manager following their victory in the Viaplay Cup irritated Michele Beale’s deputy.
Neil Banfield, former assistant to Rangers, has disclosed the motive behind publicly criticizing Ange Postecoglou for a press conference remark. Banfield’s aim was to provide additional motivation to the Rangers players in their upcoming matches against Celtic.
Banfield’s comments, expressing that Postecoglou made statements leaving a “little taste in the mouth” after Celtic’s Viaplay Cup final victory over Rangers in the previous year, raised eyebrows. He further emphasized that Postecoglou uttered things that fueled a desire within Rangers to respond with a competitive spirit, signaling, “he said one or two things that make you want to say, ‘Okay, right, we’re coming’.”
Rangers ultimately couldn’t catch up with Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic, as the Australian manager secured victories over Michael Beale’s team in the league and Scottish Cup semi-final. Although Postecoglou faced a defeat in a less significant match at Ibrox during the final league clash of the previous season before moving on to Tottenham Hotspur. Neil Banfield, drawing on his experience working with Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, clarified in an interview with Football Scotland the rationale behind his earlier comments. He explained, “Ange had made a comment, and being another coach, it was a mindset of, ‘Okay, we’re going to ensure that next time you don’t dominate the game.’ Which is fair, considering he’s the manager of Celtic!”
Saying something like, ‘Look, this is what their manager said, we don’t want that to happen again,’ is how you motivate your squad to improve. Perhaps I didn’t phrase it correctly when I said, “We’re coming for him the next game,” but I would definitely use a better wording the next time. It was just intended to serve as motivation for us to try harder and give it our all in the next game so that we wouldn’t be subjugated.
“The entire context of the conversation was acknowledging how well Ange Postecoglou had performed and what a good job he had done. Then we discussed a specific comment he made, and in the competitive spirit, you try to leverage that for your own team’s benefit. The goal was to motivate our team, ensuring he didn’t have a similar perspective in the future. I wouldn’t alter it much because if a manager says something, I’m definitely going to use it to motivate my team in the next game. It was all about preventing a recurrence!”
Banfield also addressed another comment directed at Postecoglou, this time from Michael Beale, where he referred to the Australian as a “lucky” manager.
“The former Rangers manager mentioned the money he had on hand, but it was against the Londoner—who is currently at Sunderland—and the Australian even brought it up in his speech after winning the Premiership the previous season.
“He’s just being honest and saying he’s got that ability to go in a better financial situation than Rangers at the time,” Banfield responded. Michael used the word “lucky,” but in my opinion, it was taken out of context. Instead, it should have been something like “if you have that ability, you can go again and again, you have the chance to do it.” It was taken out of context, but I don’t think it was intended to suggest anything more than that.