David Turnbull has vowed that Celtic will keep fighting after playing Rangers “off the park” on Saturday.
Neil Lennon ’s team dominated the game until Nir Bitton’s second half sending off, which swung the game in the hosts favour before Callum McGregor’s own goal won it for Steven Gerrard’s men.
The Hoops are now 19 points behind their rivals with many writing off their chances of catching the Scottish Premiership leaders, who look nailed on to stop ten-in-a-row.
Celtic are currently in Dubai for a winter training camp before hosting Hibs next Monday night.
And Turnbull is taking heart from their display at the weekend and insists no-one in green and white will give up hope of catching Rangers until it’s mathematically impossible.
“Listen, the boys can take a lot of heart from the performance at the weekend and we will keep fighting and keep pushing,” he said.
“We have a lot of ground to make up and a lot of work to do but you have to remember there’s still a lot of football to be played in the second half of the season.
“Obviously the result against Rangers was not the way we wanted things to go but our heads can’t go down. Everyone will be giving it 100 per cent.
“We’ve played them off the park for most of the game. We played really well and it’s about retaining the belief and kicking on.
“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.
“We need to get results and that’s our aim for the second half of the season. This team has shown it’s more than capable of going on winning runs and we need to find that level of consistency in the second half of the season.
“We need to forget about the defeat, put it to the back of our minds and move on. We will focus on ourselves, dust ourselves down.”
