NO man is an island, as the saying goes, and no manager can afford to be either. As much as Ange Postecoglou likes to be across most matters at Celtic, and accepts that the buck stops with him if things should go awry, that is very much the philosophy he is adopting in his day-to-day working life.

That means from chief executive Michael Nicholson at the top right down to the ballboys, Postecoglou is delighted to see the entire club getting behind his vision, and doing whatever they can to help him take Celtic where he wants the club to go.

Relinquishing some control didn’t initially come easy to the admittedly 'old-school' Postecoglou, mind, but while he accepts full responsibility for any failures that lie ahead, he is fully of the opinion that any success Celtic may enjoy will have had many fathers.

“I’m the one the responsibility lies within the football department,” he said. “The buck stops with me.

“My best chance of success is if the club supports my vision and that’s what the club is doing.

“Michael has been very good about making sure the plans I want to put in place are slowly getting there.

“It’s not a short term thing. We want to build a really strong foundation for the club on and off the field.

“For that to happen there is no chance I can do it on my own. I need good people around me and Michael leads that.

“It’s fair to say I’m a bit old school. When I started, I was pretty much doing everything – but, back then, most managers were I guess, 25 years ago.

“I guess it’s just my nature, I like to have control of things that I’m going to be responsible for. And I’ve worked that way through my whole career.

“I didn’t explicitly say that was the way I wanted to work [when I first came to the club]. But I kind of guessed the club were well aware of me and what strengths I have.

‘They wouldn’t have brought me in if they didn’t think I would fit into what they wanted to do here.

“I am a person who likes to take control. Because I’m going to be responsible for it. There won’t be anyone else sitting front and centre if things don’t go well. If things do go well, we all share in the success.

“But if they don’t go well, people won’t have to go far to find out where the buck stops. It stops with me. That’s the case and that’s the way I want it to be, I like to have control over a lot of things and share my vision.

“But, again, it’s not me working on my own. I don’t want people thinking I’m doing everything here, far from it.

“Obviously it’s my vision and, from day one, I said the most important thing, coming into the football club on my own, was that people believed in me.

“Not so much what I was going to do. If people believe in me as a person, whatever vision I have, they’ll support. And it’s been like that so far.”

The talk of restructuring behind the scenes at Celtic has been ongoing since long before Postecoglou arrived in Glasgow, with the lack of a director of football being routinely held up as a sign that the club were operating in the dark ages.

Fans may eventually be seeing the light though as the partnership between Postecoglou and new chief executive Nicholson looks to have got off on a sound footing, with the swift transfer business conducted in this window a marked difference from the way things used to be done.

For Postecoglou, it is a sign that things are running smoothly behind the scenes at the club, and that he and Nicholson are pulling in the same direction.

“It’s an important relationship [between myself and Michael] because I don’t have the money to do it,” Postecoglou said. “My bank account is nowhere near big enough to do the business I’ve been doing!

“Like every manager around the world, we don’t work in isolation. We are part of a bigger organisation.

“It’s not just Michael, it’s the whole football club. It needs to generate revenue and funds, our supporters are important for me to do the work I do.

“It’s absolutely essential, you can’t do it without having strong relationships.

“It’s not just Michael, I have good relationships with all departments because we are all one. It’s not separate entities that just come together on a match day. We are all working together for the same goal.

“It doesn’t just seem to be working – it is working. There’s a lot of language going around but things don’t get done unless people are working effectively.

“I’m not just trying to point a rosy picture here. I was working with Michael on transfers in the summer when he was very involved. The key thing for me is the club are supporting my vision for the club, and as a manager that’s what you need.”