GLASGOW: Manager Steven Gerrard says he hopes “a lot of people will take notice” of Rangers’ “big” performance in their 2-1 Scottish Premiership win at Celtic.
Nikola Katic’s header gave the Ibrox side a first league win at Celtic Park since 2010, cutting the deficit at the top to two points at the winter break.
Rangers also have a game in hand over their city rivals.
Gerrard said: “We showed that we’re big players and a big team collectively. Hopefully a lot of people will take notice of that performance. It’s a big win because this club hasn’t had much success here for a long time. It feels the best [win of his Rangers’ tenure] right now.
“But I don’t want to take anything away from the fact that we have just came out a Champions League level [Europa League] group to qualify for the last-32.
“We’ve come here and faced a really big challenge and a good team, and again we’ve dominated the majority of the game so the players deserve an awful lot of credit.”
League leaders Celtic had won 11 straight Premiership games before the encounter at Celtic Park, where the champions had not lost domestically since the final day of the 2017-18 season.
But it was Rangers who started brighter and, after surviving a Ryan Christie penalty miss, went ahead through Ryan Kent.
Celtic responded six minutes later when Callum McGregor’s shot deflected in off the hand of Odsonne Edouard, but Katic’s towering header ended as the winner.
Gerrard said he had “no complaints” about Alfredo Morelos’ stoppage-time red card after he was booked for diving.
However, he did add: “We’ll accept that, but he [referee Kevin Clancy] has missed a clear red card on [Christopher] Jullien bringing Alfredo down. I believe the second part has maybe come from that.”
Rangers won the last Old Firm derby of 2018 to go into the winter break level on points with Celtic, but eventually lost the title by eight points by May.
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