No such thing as a lost cause with my team, insists Ange

ANGE POSTECOGLOU praised the never-say-die mentality of his Celtic players after Kyogo Furuhashi’s late strike salvaged a precious point against Rangers.

The Parkhead top scorer smashed his 16th goal of the season in the 88th minute as the champions snatched a 2-2 draw at Ibrox. Nine points clear at the summit of the SPFL Premiership, Furuhashi’s first goal against Rangers was the 17th time this season Celtic have scored in the final 15 minutes of a game. Heading for defeat after a Ryan Kent stunner and a James Tavernier penalty overhauled Daizen Maeda’s early goal, Postecoglou insists his side never know when they are beaten.

‘It’s the way this group is, the way we have created the environment,’ he said. ‘There isn’t anything like a lost cause. You go until the final whistle and nothing changes. You have to do that. For that to be effective, you have to do it on a weekly basis. And we do. ‘Even in our comfortable victories, you’ll still see us being really aggressive till the last minute. ‘The players are conditioned to think that way and play that way. It’s easy for me to talk about it, but in today’s environment, and the way the game was, it would have been almost natural to say: “Jeez, it’s not going to be our day”. But this group of players just doesn’t do that.’ Handed the perfect start when Japan World Cup star Maeda took advantage of awful Rangers defending to score after five minutes, Postecoglou’s game plan was damaged by a hamstring injury to left-back Greg Taylor after 20 minutes.

Pressing Croatia right-back Josip Juranovic in to action as a makeshift left-back — ahead of back-up leftback Alexandro Bernabei — Rangers took advantage of the imbalance in the Celtic rearguard to score twice after the restart.

‘It was a cracking game of football, a good derby,’ said the Celtic boss. ‘Both teams were going at it. We started really well and then just lost our way a little bit. The last 10/15 minutes of the first half we were giving the ball away unnecessarily, uncharacteristically for us without a great deal of pressure.

‘That allowed them to get that bit of belief and they came out at the start of the second half really strong. ‘We struggled to get to grips with the game but again when it was required the players found the will and character to get the goal later to get us a result.’

In a couple of big pre-match calls, the Australian handed new £3million Canadian World Cup right-back Alistair Johnston a baptism of fire. ‘I thought he was good,’ said Postecoglou. ‘For the most part, he handled himself really well.’