Brendan Rodgers revealed his team talk centred around the late Jock Stein before Celtic thrashed Rangers 5-1 in their first Premiership clash in four years at Parkhead.
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Rangers return home to Ibrox to take on Ross County next week, and Warburton has promised supporters that only a win will be acceptable. But I have watched enough derby matches over the years to know that the form book is pointless and that anything can happen.
Rangers finished a player and an assistant manager down at Celtic Park in the first league encounter between the two sides in four years.
“We just have to work harder”, he added.
“We understand the emotions and the significance of the game to so many people in Glasgow”, he said. September 10, 2016 is one more red-letter day in Scottish football as the Old Firm makes a return in the Scottish Premiership after four long years in the Scottish top flight.
“You don’t need to motivate them and we have a lot of players that have been around it and experienced it”, the Celtic manager said. I think you have seen the Rangers we want to be over the course of the four games, even if it has been half-an-hour here or there.
But Warburton is refusing to write off his side’s title hopes already, insisting: “It’s game five of a long season”.
“I think we were comfortable the first 20 minutes, but then we give away a cheap goal which frustrated us, in terms of men being in the box and the corner, we didn’t deal with that”.
That, ultimately, proved so costly with Moussa Dembele grabbing a hat-trick.
Warburton admitted that debut defender Philippe Senderos was deservedly red carded on 75 minutes for a foolish handball while on a booking. Foderingham made a fine save from Armstrong’s long-range effort before Callum McGregor replaced Hoops skipper Scott Brown, whose much anticipated battle with Joey Barton did not materialise.
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– Former Nottingham Forest and Liverpool striker Stan Collymore has predicted on Boylesports.com that Celtic will win against Rangers this weekend. We did and for 15 minutes I thought we were good. “This is a guy who created a template here and I am very proud there is a team today which can play aggressively but fairly and one which when things go wrong can have that mentality to bounce back”.
