New Celtic Serbian coach Veselin Jelušić wants more goals

New Bloemfontein Celtic coach Veselin Jelusic knows what needs immediate fixing in his team – the ability to score goals after a drought in the last campaign almost cost the club their top flight status.

“Of course‚ we would like to achieve better results than we did last season‚” he told TimesLIVE in his first interview since being named as coach at the start of the week.

“I can see what the biggest problem is. More than anything‚ it is in the final third of the field close to the opponent’s goal and our scoring ability.

“So we are going to work hard on this department‚ but it also depends on the quality and characteristics of the players we have.

“It also depends on our method of working‚ but we certainly need to work hard on this part of our game.”

Celtic’s paltry tally of 16 goals in the last PSL season was the second-worst return by any club in the 20-year history of the league.

Serbian Jelusic is a former national team coach of both Angola and Botswana and although new to South Africa‚ is certainly not unfamiliar with the PSL and its players.

“It’s a quality league and has seen a lot of improvement in recent years. So many facets of the South African game are well developed‚ like infrastructure‚ organisation‚ media support and so on‚” he said.

“I was around South Africa a lot when I was working in Botswana but I left there in 2010. The last two years I have been in Angola at InterClube. For the 2015 season I was the head coach and last year I served as technical director.

“I feel comfortable about my knowledge of South African football because of the experience I picked up when I was coach of teams in Angola and Botswana‚ because we used to come to South Africa often.

“Sometimes it was for friendly games and training camps and sometimes for official games.”

Jelusic confirmed Celtic were seeking to sign players during the off-season transfer window to strengthen their squad.

- TimesLIVE