According to Brendan Rodgers, Celtic is presently in a great position to win the championship again. However, the Parkhead manager believes that Fabio Silva of Rangers engaged in simulation, as the champions narrowly failed to win by four points. Following an Ibrox classic, Rodgers’ team maintained their advantage at the top of the standings. Celtic almost missed to stretch their advantage to four points, after being hauled back from being ahead 2-0 at halftime and 3-2 in stoppage time following Daizen Maeda’s opener, Matt O’Riley’s penalty, and substitute Adam Idah’s late goal.
However, Rodgers believes his team is in a good position going into the last Old Firm game at home following the split, saying, “It puts us in a really strong position.” With six games remaining, we still have a lot of work ahead of us. However, I’m quite content when my closest opponent is still left to play in front of 60,000 or so fans at home and I know that at that point, I will be even stronger. After the game, I told the players, “I could tell they were disappointed not to win.”
“I believe we definitely showed up for a club that has been written off and told they are just going through the motions for the entire season. We are prepared to show up as this is the last day of business for the season.
“I am quite optimistic about their mental state during the game. For us, it will be enormous and tremendous. I am incredibly happy with the team’s performance and confident that [Reo] Hatate will succeed in helping Callum [McGregor] become stronger and more fit. We’re becoming more powerful. We can now carry that over for the remainder of the season. I’m ecstatic.
Rodgers’ squad had a two-goal advantage and was in control, and the manager thought the Rangers penalty provided the home team a boost. Alistair Johnston challenged Silva, who went down. Referee John Beaton first booked the Rangers attacker for diving, but after VAR Nick Walsh brought him to the monitor for a second inspection, he decided not to penalize the striker.
“I’m disappointed with the penalty, as it gives them a slight advantage in the game when we were clearly the superior team,” stated Rodgers. Ali, who has a booking, needs to be really cautious about when he makes tackles in the second half, but I felt he did it flawlessly.
“In my opinion, the referee called everything perfectly on the field. The player imitated and it was accurate when he made contact with the ball. They obviously score the penalty at that point. When the score reaches 2-1, you start to expect something from Rangers. “Then Adam scores a wonderful goal to give us the lead. Even though we had a chance to hold on, a goal from Kevin De Bruyne in the closing moments proved to be too much for us to handle. A wonderful goal is scored by [Rabbi] Matondo.
After Idah’s goal appeared to be the game-winning play with three minutes remaining in normal time, Rodgers stated, “Listen, I’m not disappointed.” The game is obviously still ongoing when eight more minutes have passed, therefore it never ends when the final whistle blows. “Yet we persisted in our fight and pushing, and these games without fans are thankfully the last ones left. The players had to stand up and be counted, and they did just that.” In the first part, you witnessed that.
O’Riley had practiced his dinked penalty, according to Rodgers, who also remarked, “It was an amazing game to be involved in.” I’m incredibly proud of the squad for the way we handled the situation and played. The initial part of it was really outstanding. was at ease during the entire game. We played a fair amount of football; we attacked both with and without the ball, and by halftime, we could have been more at ease. “However, the entire process involved leaving with the show and still having everything in our control.” What we demonstrated, in my opinion, was our football team’s caliber, the players’ return to fitness, and our ability to handle and control pressure. Extremely pleased with the group.
As a unit, the team was outstanding. The only thing that disappointed us was that we wasted one or two more chances.
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