‘Win does not mean Celtic will win league’

RANGERS manager Alex McLeish insisted his side’s third successive league defeat to Celtic did not automatically mean that the balance of power had shifted towards Parkhead.

His side's 1-0 Ibrox reverse knocked last season's Treble winners off the summit of the Bank of Scotland Premier League.

McLeish had previously admitted he did not think his team would have won all three domestic trophies had Celtic not also been fighting on the European front which took them all the way to the UEFA Cup final.

Now both Old Firm giants are in Champions League action the first time this has happened and Rangers ended up being beaten on their own patch for the second time in as many matches.

McLeish insisted: "We will suffer this weekend but there is a long, long way to go. We exchanged places last year a couple of times and that can happen. We were written off last year after drawing at Kilmarnock in the first game. It doesn't mean Celtic will win the league."

Celtic manager Martin O'Neill, whose side would have fallen five points behind if they had lost, was of exactly the same opinion.

He said: "It is a definite boost to win at Ibrox at any time, but the fact is that we took more points from them in the head to heads in the league last season and still ended up losing it.

"My own view is and I'm not just playing it down is that winning helps us and gives us a boost of confidence. Five points adrift would have been a lot, but it doesn't make any appreciable difference to the challenge, especially with the two sides still involved in European games."

Both managers admitted that it had not been a typical all-action derby where tackles fly in and yellow cards are brandished at regular intervals, possibly indicative of the fact that just one Scot, Celtic's Jackie McNamara, started the game.

McLeish said: "We were maybe a bit too technical. We needed to be a wee bit more ruthless. We needed a strike at goal, for instance, in the first 10 minutes. We got to the edge of the box, we came back, we started again.

"There is nothing wrong with keeping the ball of course but maybe a shot at goal from deep midfield would have tested Magnus Hedman in his first Old Firm game, but we didn't do that.

"I didn't think there was a lack of urgency. I thought we were methodical but there was a lack of balls into the strikers, to Michael Mols especially. I don't think Michael got a ball to his feet until the second half."

O'Neill added: "It seemed more a tactical game than anything else, but it was still an Old Firm game and it got my heart going."

In the end, the game was settled by a moment where fortune favoured Celtic. Rangers had been forced to reshuffle their back line after Craig Moore, who had clocked up just 135 minutes of action since a six-week lay-off with a hamstring problem, reported at half-time he had lost the ability to sprint.

On came Maurice Ross so Zura Khizanishvili switched from right-back to centre-half and within 20 seconds had deflected a John Hartson cross intended for Henrik Larsson past goalkeeper Stefan Klos and into his own net.

O'Neill was justified in his claim that the better chances had been created by his side.

He said: "We knew it was going to be hard and we had to concentrate for long periods in the game but, strangely enough, despite Rangers having great possession in the game we carved out the best chances. Klos has been immense again. How he got to John Hartson's one just before half-time was incredible."

Celtic's victory came at a cost, however, as Alan Thompson limped off midway through the first half with a hamstring injury.