The emergence of David Turnbull along with Ismaila Soro have been the silver linings on a season to forget for Celtic, although the former Motherwell midfielder isn’t quite ready to give up on it yet.
Quite rightly Celtic should concede nothing and keep on trying to win every remaining game to see if theRangers will blink. Remember in 2005 when we won at Ibrox leaving us 5 points clear with two games to go against Hibs at Celtic Park and Motherwell at Fir Park. They needed two favours from two games, we need two from 16 so while it is hardly looking likely it is NOT over yet.
Speaking to the media, as reported by Scottish Sun, the £3.25m summer signing echoed that message. “The boys can take a lot of heart from the performance at the weekend and we will keep fighting and keep pushing.
“We need to get results and that’s our aim for the second half of the season. Obviously the result against (the)Rangers was not the way we wanted things to go.
“We played really well and now it’s all about retaining the belief and kicking on. Our heads can’t go down. We’ve played them off the park for most of the game.
“It’s about picking ourselves up and trying to go on that all-important winning run. We need to win as many games as we can. We can’t look at anyone else.
“This team is more than capable of going on winning runs and we must find that level of consistency for the rest of the season. We need to forget about the defeat and move on. We’ll dust ourselves down and focus on what we can do.
“You have to remember there’s still a lot of football to be played this season. Everyone will be giving it 100 per cent.”
Over on Glasgow Times more on what Turnbull had to say was reported. “We showed against theRangers that we are a quality team,” he said. “We dominated large parts of the match until the sending off.
“It’s a tough one to take. Until the red card I thought we were playing really well and we were in complete control of the game. I felt we were causing them a lot of problems, especially in the first half and we carried that into the second half. It’s just unlucky that we didn’t take anything from the game.”
On the decision by controversial referee Bobby Madden who saw the Bitton challenge on Morelos as a foul and a red card Turnbull had this to say: “I don’t know about the red card, it changed the game of that there is no doubt. I thought big Kris Ajer was coming in behind so I felt the cover was there. As soon as I saw the ref I thought it was a bit of a soft one, I’m certainly not sure about it.”
Compare and contrast with Madden’s decision making in this video, especially the challenge on Leigh Griffiths as he was about to shoot on goal…