STEVEN Gerrard last night admitted Rangers’ 2-1 triumph over Celtic at Parkhead as the best of his managerial career to date – but stressed his side must still work hard to land the Scottish title.
The Ibrox club racked up their first win at Celtic Park since October 2010 thanks to goals in each half from Ryan Kent and Nikola Katic.
They are now two points behind their city rivals in the Ladbrokes Premiership table with a game in hand against St Johnstone at home still to play.
Gerrard, whose team beat Legia Warsaw, Feyenoord and Porto to qualify for the Europa League last 32 this season, admitted the result was the highlight of his time in Glasgow.
“It feels the best right now,” he said. “I don’t want to take anything away from the fact we have just come out of a Champions League-level group to qualify for the last 32 of the Europa League.
“But Celtic are a fantastic team. You only have to look at what they have achieved in recent years. They have serial winners in their team.
“It’s emotional. You can see that by my reaction after the game. It’s a big moment for the team and the club. It’s been through too much pain here, too many defeats and setbacks and knocks, so it’s a big win, a huge win.
“We’ve come here and dominated against a very good team, a successful team, a team that we’ve got respect for because of what they’ve achieved. But I’m so proud and pleased with the performance the players have put in."
Gerrard added: “This is a big challenge for me and the players, but we are doing everything we can to take the challenge to them. That’s what we need to keep doing.
“I always say after a defeat that it’s important to move on and wipe the slate clean. We can enjoy tonight and enjoy the big victory but there’s still loads of work to do. We know we’re competing against good teams. We won’t look at the table too much.
“A defeat here would have been damaging, a draw would have been ‘ on you go’ and a win is big momentum for us. It’s important that we rest, enjoy the little break and come back with a better mentality after the break than we came back with last year.
"Every game is going to be tough and we have to make sure we are ready when we come back.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel