I made a few saves but this match is all about winning and we came up short so it took the shine off my display
No stopping Craig’s downer after Ibrox loss
CRAIG GORDON saved his team from a derby drubbing but still left Ibrox gutted that his efforts counted for nothing.
However, the Celtic keeper is convinced his team will recover from the 1-0 defeat to re-establish their domestic dominance after batteries are recharged in the winter break.
Gordon denied Rangers with a handful of top stops but could do nothing to keep out the Ryan Jack effort that separated the Glasgow rivals and took them into mid-season hiatus level on points, with Celtic having a game in hand.
It remains a strong position but the Parkhead No.1 was honest enough to admit Celtic didn’t do enough to claim a share of the spoils despite his heroics.
Gordon said: “It’s all dependent on the result. If we’d managed to nick a goal and get a result it would have felt great. But we lost the game and that takes a massive shine off my performance.
“It’s about winning and to do that you need to play well. We came up short.
“We have done so well at Ibrox in the past but we didn’t play well enough to win. But we’re still top of the league with a game in hand.
“We will go away for a break, regroup and finish the season strong.”
Rangers’ high-energy pressing game forced Celtic into errors while passing out from the back.
But Gordon insists his team won’t change their style in the second half of the campaign.
He added: “That’s part of the gameplan. It’s what we want as well. You want teams to come and press us to try to play through them.
“It’s a cat and mouse game and you look to take advantage of that and so do the opposition. That’s part of the plan to draw teams on to you to try and create space.
“So that doesn’t bother us and we are going to try to enforce our game on everyone else.
“We just need to play better. We didn’t pass the ball particularly well at all, for whatever reason. But that has been a very successful style of play.
“We have done well doing that, winning a lot of matches at Ibrox playing that same way.
“We will look to improve of course. We always learn from any defeats and analyse what happened. But we will come back stronger.” Gordon refused to use the loss through injury of defenders Mikael Lustig and Filip Benkovic for the defeat – and insisted having only 750 fans cheering on the Hoops instead of the usual 7500 had no bearing on the performance.
He said: “The changes didn’t make a great deal of impact. We were still set up to play in a certain style.
“We just didn’t manage to execute our gameplan well enough.
“Whoever plays they all know their roles. Callum McGregor did a good job at left-back and we knew what we were trying to do. We just weren’t capable of carrying out the plan well enough.
“With the fans situation I was too busy concentrating on what was going on in the game in front of me.
“You don’t have time to really notice what’s happening. I still heard the fans at times, trying to spur us on.
“But I wouldn’t look for excuses elsewhere. We could still have come, done the job and got a result.”
And the keeper refuted any suggestion Rangers’ victory could mark a swing in the balance of power. Gordon added: “It’s one win in 13 games. It’s still very heavily in our favour. It’s one game we haven’t managed to win.
“We will stay calm, pick the bones out of it and come back stronger.
“If it is a jolt to us then there is no better time to go away and work hard.
“That’s what we’ve done every year for this manager. We’ve gone away, worked hard and come back stronger in the second part of the season and that’s what we have to do again.”
Gordon admits he expects a
challenge on several fronts before the prizes are handed out at the end of the season.
He said: “I think there’s a lot of teams who are stronger this season.
“If you look at the top eight in the league there’s not a great deal between them and away games are particularly difficult, especially against the top-eight teams who are all fighting to be at the top end of the league.
“It’s a good league but we will look to improve over the winter break.
“If we add one or two players then great – if not we still have a great amount of quality in this squad to come back.
“As the games gets less and the recovery time in between them gets more, the stronger the team will become.
“But we need to start winning games, home and away. It’s been difficult, teams have played well against us, they want to raise their game to try to beat us.
“That’s something we always have to deal with and go on a good run and go and try to win games again.”