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There is a reason why rags like the Scottish Sun and the Daily Record are no longer relevant and have decreasing readership year on year.

It’s because they are full of made up guff and print mistruths on a consistent basis, and this is the case here with Paul Hartley’s interview on Celtic’s Champions League chances this year.

The headline states:

“Celtic won’t be allowed to play Angeball in Champions League and Postecoglou needs to change his ways insists Hoops hero”

The problem here is, Paul didn’t say this, he didn’t even say anything remotely like this.

The newspaper has just totally lied in their headline, because I’ve read the article twice over and he does not say this at all.

Here is what Hartley said on Postecoglou:

“I don’t think Ange does compromise, but sometimes you’ve just got to say, ‘We’re playing against better players today and we might get punished more.”

“I like listening to him. I don’t know him, but I’d like to speak to him. I like the way he talks. He’s really honest, which is unusual for managers nowadays.”

“He tells you how it is. If you play well, you play well, but if you don’t play well, you don’t play well.”

As you can see, he said at the start he doesn’t believe Ange will compromise his style of play, and says he will likely make the players aware that we may be punished more due to the increased level of opposition. That is completely normal and true, no matter what style of football we were playing.

But nowhere at all does Hartley say that we “won’t be allowed to play Angeball” and he certainly did not “insist” we change our style of play. It’s just totally untrue to make out this is what he said.

They have made this out to be an article from an ex Celtic player bashing the manager and his style of play with that headline, when Hartley was nothing but complimentary about the manager and saying he likes listening to him and would love to speak with him.

If Hartley has any sense, that will be the last time he gives that rag an interview, because being so wrongly misquoted could end up doing real damage to someone’s reputation in the game and their relationship with fellow managers.

Below is a screenshot of the original headline, just in case it gets republished with a new one on the site, as what tends to happen once headlines like these are called out.