Brendan Rodgers: 'Rangers made a lot of noise before the game but Celtic showed champion mentality'

Satisfaction and relief are the customary responses of the winning manager after an Old Firm derby, but for Brendan Rodgers there has also been the relish of a week in which he repeatedly exploited opportunities to dictate the agenda on the run-up to the occasion.

Rodgers’ opposite number at Ibrox, Graeme Murty, consistently declined invitations to talk about victory as the gateway to a genuine championship challenge and he returned to the subject following Rangers’ 3-2 defeat.

“I haven’t talked about the title once,” he said. “You guys talk about the title, as is your job, your wont and your role.”

Murty, however, had let slip that, in the aftermath of the draw for the semi-finals of the William Hill Scottish Cup, which produced another Old Firm meeting, his players had cheered – and that gave Rodgers the opening to respond with a barb of “be careful what you wish for”.

The Celtic manager also parlayed that disclosure, plus some media cheerleading for Rangers, into an attitude supposedly being nourished at Ibrox that his men would want to punish.

After the victory, Rodgers twisted the stiletto when he said, with a straight face: “You always have to have humility in your approach to the game and respect your opponent.

“There was a lot of noise before the game, but that’s natural – they have been on a good run and at home, thinking they could get the victory, but I think the players today showed their quality and that real champion mentality.”

Rodgers’ calculated timing was on display prior to kick-off. With the teams assembling on the field, he emerged last from the tunnel, ambled across Rangers’ technical area to the unsuspecting Murty and surprised his rival with a hug from behind. It is not, one fancies, a ploy that Rodgers would have attempted on Walter Smith, the former Rangers manager,  watching in the stand.

Rangers’ players were unable to free themselves from Celtic’s embrace, even when the Hoops were down to 10 men after the dismissal of Jozo Simunovic. Unable to force an entry to the Celtic penalty area, they tried to work the flanks, but overcooked cross after cross.

Murty was bleakly honest after the match when he said: “I’ve just told the players in the changing room, ‘you’ll never have a better opportunity to win the game.’

“We’ve let that opportunity get away by not being good at the basics and conceding three really poor goals.

“We were too slow in possession – too many touches, too straight, too easy to defend. We didn’t shift the ball quickly enough or well enough to play through them.

“The only time we played into their box, with good quality and good tempo, we gave Alfredo [Morelos] the opportunity from five or six yards which we should take. But we tried to apply pressure by lumping balls into the box which isn’t us.” Such predictable play made life easy for Celtic goalkeeper Scott Bain, on his club debut, but he could have been beaten late in the game, when the rebound from his block on a Josh Windass shot fell to Morelos, who struck a post.

“I’d saved the first shot and I looked up and saw the ball going to him,” said Bain. “I just thought, ‘aw naw’. Luckily he hit the post and I was able to scramble and catch the ball before it went over the line.

“I was expecting him to score but I knew I had to get up just in case anything happened. It was a massive moment in the game but the way we handled going down to 10 men was amazing.”