Fighting spirit delights Gerrard

STEVEN GERRARD was proud of the efforts of his Rangers players as they ended a rollercoaster month with a battling draw at Parkhead.

The champions remain on course for an unbeaten Premiership campaign after Alfredo Morelos scored his first derby goal to earn Gerrard’s side a share of the spoils that keeps them 20 points clear at the top of the table.

Rangers clinched their first top-flight title in a decade this month before missing out on a place in the quarter-finals of the Europa League following their defeat to Slavia Prague.

Gerrard was pleased to see the spirit in his squad as Rangers again dug deep and found a way to grind out a positive result in the face of adversity.

“I wish people knew what we’d been through in the last two or three weeks,” Gerrard said. “We’ve done a bit of everything. We’ve done a bit of partying, we’ve done a bit of travelling and we’ve had tough games. That’s meant we’ve had to focus a lot. We knew coming here that there would be times when we had to suck it up and soak it up.

“But the proud thing for me is that our players never gave up and they kept fighting. They showed real resilience and character and we were still going end to end in the last 30 minutes trying to win a game.

“Celtic had two weeks to prepare for this and they threw everything at it. You could imagine what was being said behind closed doors to them.

“So our players stood up to that really well and it’s a positive result for us. That’s the four Old Firms and we’ve won three and drawn one. It’s seven out of nine this year so we’re okay. But I think you could see with certain individuals today that we lacked a little bit of energy. But that’s human, that’s normal.

“The main thing is these players have a real togetherness and a real spirit. We’ll try and continue that between now and the end of the season and make it even better than is already is.”