TOOTHLESS AT IBROX SO WATCH US BE RUTHLESS Forrest vows to avenge below-par festive loss

run. One game over the full season, you don’t win or lose anything over that one game.

“It was just worse because we didn’t have a game a few days later to rectify matters.

“But I think we got over it, which we’ve shown by our form since the break.

We’ve kept that up since we’ve been back. We were hurting – some boys hadn’t experienced that before at Celtic.

“It doesn’t make you try harder as such but it maybe makes you work harder to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“Definitely for us, what was important was that we came back and won our game in hand. After that we just wanted to be ruthless in every game.

“We didn’t want to drop points and give anyone around us a chance. We focused on ourselves to make sure we did what we knew we could do.”

Celtic weren’t without their troubles on December 29.

No Leigh Griffiths, no Tom Rogic, a half-fit Kieran Tierney and Odsonne Edouard on the bench, Callum McGregor fitting in at left-back and teenage rookie Mikey Johnston leading the line on his own.

It would be easy for Forrest to make a plea in mitigation but he doesn’t take the easy way out.

He shrugged: “You can look at other games when other teams like Rangers maybe haven’t been full strength and other players have played out of position.

“But you get a good result, you don’t think about it. We didn’t need that as an excuse. We didn’t turn up on the day and we weren’t good enough. The result was the right one that day and we don’t want that to happen again. I wouldn’t say too much about the team.

“We didn’t hit our standards that day, as a team or individually – that’s why we felt so disappointed. We know we can play miles better.

“We just didn’t turn up. We didn’t get going or create any clear-cut chances to do damage to Rangers. That was unlike us compared to the games we’d played in before.”

This will be stand-in boss Neil Lennon’s first game against the old enemy since he got back in the Celtic saddle in February when Brendan Rodgers departed for Leicester City – but Forrest insists the manager is keeping it low-key.

He said: “There won’t be a different approach. Since the manager has come in, he’s told us to take it game by game.

“After a week or 10 days of him coming in, it just felt as though he had never been away. He’s just the same – he’s a motivator and all of the boys have taken to him.

“You can see that we’ve picked up a few good results so that’s been good for him to settle in.

“Now we need to make sure we’re up for it. This is a big game and we want to get a result.” for the first derby of the season but we probably sat off them too much. In the home game we got in their faces and stopped them playing. That was key to winning the game at Ibrox. “It’s about getting the balance right away from home. But we have a decent mixture now of people who have played in the fixture, experienced it and know what to expect. I’m not sure that will strengthen my case to be involved – that’s up to the manager – but I’m desperate to play.

“We need to try to put a seed of doubt in Celtic’s minds by winning the game.

“They have a healthy cushion in the league and it’s going to be difficult for us to claw that back. But as big as the gap is right now, you just never know what might happen in football.”