Ange Postecoglou savours the Celtic strain as he lauds Robbie Neilson and Mikel Arteta turnarounds

The Parkhead gaffer says management has to be enjoyed due to its difficulty and that pressure can be lifted as easily as it's applied.

Ange Postecoglou hears the praise for Mikel Arteta just as clearly as he heard angry critics scream for Arsenal's table-topping gaffer to be fired last season.

The Celtic boss is aware managers are getting stick these days before games are even finished. He’s seen club chiefs around the globe pull the trigger regularly on bosses. Every week, a peer is under intense and savage scrutiny. In Scotland over the past few days, it’s been the turn of Jim Goodwin at Aberdeen. It’s been others in the past. It’ll be someone else in the future.

Postecoglou empathises with his managerial colleagues. The Aussie understands the fearsome demands and often-unfair criticism which sears around the modern game. But, if anyone is feeling the strain, he says they’ll feel it a lot more in the future if the day comes when they are not under the spotlight at all. Postecoglou said: “I’ve loved what I have done. You go into management because you love being on the edge every weekend, you love being on a competitive scale every time you play.

“So I think if you talk to any manager, particularly the experienced ones, they’ll tell you their most unhappiest times are when they are not in a job and not when in one. I think after a while you understand that you actually love what you do and there is a reason why you do it.”

On the empathy, he continued: “Absolutely and you understand that everyone has their own challenges. Even guys who are going well, you don’t just sit back and think they have got it easy by any stretch. The guy who is on top of the Premier League at the moment, Mikel Arteta, is a guy who people were calling for his head not long ago. Now he’s the best manager in the league.

"The best clubs tend to pick people that they think are the right ones for the job and then support them to get the job done. Someone mentioned it, Robbie Neilson at Hearts. He’s done a fantastic job the last three years and it wasn’t that long ago with him. If they had changed him, they could have changed another half a dozen since then and probably not the success they have had now.

”We all feel for guys who are going through a tough time in our roles because we know that could be us one day. We know how tough that is. So there is a respect there. Everyone is under pressure in certain ways. These days, clubs tend to be pretty quick to pull the trigger. The one thing that has proven is that that is no recipe for success. Any clubs changing managers on a regular basis rarely have any sustained success.

“It’s getting tougher, for sure. for young managers. The scrutiny is a lot greater due to the way we communicate these days. I’ve said it before, when I first started, I could wait until Monday’s papers to read about how poor I was. Now it’s happening before the final whistle goes because of social media. Young managers are having to deal with that a lot more, but, again, it’s about finding the right mechanisms to cope with that.”

It must surely feel a lonely existence at times for some under fire, but Postecoglou says it’s about staying strong to your principles.He said: “People don’t tend to give me advice these days as they know what sort of response they are going to get! I can deal with things a lot better. I don’t know about a loneliness in the job. I don’t feel lonely. I’ve never felt isolated. All of us have family and friends around us who can be that support network that you need.

“As I said, aside from that, I think there is a general respect that all managers have for each other and an understanding for each other.” Postecoglou takes his team to Tayside tomorrow for a game against Dundee United and Tannadice boss Liam Fox spoke this week about his appreciation at words offered by the Aussie on the day the teams met just prior to the World Cup break.

The Celtic boss said: “I’m always respectful because I know how difficult the job is. I’ve been doing this for a long time now. It’s my 26th/27th year of managing at this level and, especially young coaches, if I can have any kind of chats with them and just give them a little bit of guidance and mainly the advice is to just to be themselves.

“Particularly when you are a young manager, there’s a lot of people telling you what to do and how to do things. The important thing is to be yourself and Liam was receptive. I’m not going to go to people who I feel are quite happy with their own counsel. It depends on individuals.

"I think Liam has really settled that group. They had a really tough start to the year. People highlight our result [0-9], but there was some bad results in Europe as well. If you look at their form since the break, they have been really consistent and he will surely be happy with that as he’ll be looking for further growth and we expect a big test.”

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