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Dembele scores hat-trick as Celtic rout Rangers

Substitute Stuart Armstrong finished the scoring in stoppage time to continue Celtic’s 100 per cent start to the season as they move four points clear of Rangers with a game in hand against their Old Firm foes. They have the bragging rights and deserved to win.

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“For us to come back (after the worldwide break) and play to that intensity and that level and be that clinical, it was a joy to see”, he said.

“But, as I say, at 3-1 we had a choice to make – damage limitation or do we actually look to say ‘will we get the next goal here and we could nick something at the end?’ Good players make good decisions and too many times today we made poor decisions in possession”. The support from them was magnificent, but we don’t come here, or anywhere, and lose goals like that. “I think so”, replied Brown with a smile. We did and for 15 minutes I thought we were good.

Within the ground pictures of two hanged plastic dolls, one with a Rangers scarf around the neck, with arms tied behind their backs with black tape, dangling above Parkhead appeared on social media following the game.

Dembele rounded off his hat-trick in the 84th minute shortly after Rangers centre-back Philippe Senderos was given his marching orders for inexplicably punching the ball away after a mistimed jump. He said: “The sending-off, I can’t defend, it’s a red card”.

“I’m never going to condone men being sent off but you send off Senderos because he had to go and the other player had to go as well”. He gets the ball, and he’s taken out by a player on a yellow card.

Warburton could obviously see where some of Rangers’ problems were making an uncharacteristic half-time change, replacing the ineffective Kranjcar with Andy Halliday, and the change looked to have re-invigorated the light blues.

Rangers will try to get back to winning ways next weekend when they welcome Ross County to Ibrox for a Premiership fixture.

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The fact that the Scottish media has not picked up on it yet in their coverage is just temporary and I fully expect them to run with stories about this over the next day or so – who can blame them really?

Rangers&#039 Philippe Senderos is shown a second yellow card and sent off by William Collum