John Kennedy hasn’t given up hope on unleashing James Forrest at Ibrox as he vowed to send out the Celts all guns blazing in Sunday’s Scottish Cup showdown.
The Hoops winger is battling to be fit for the crunch last 16 clash with Gers after limping off in last weekend’s 6-0 lashing of Livingston.
Kennedy will give the Scotland star right up until kick-off – but is drawing up an attacking game plan to go after the champions.
The interim boss said: “We’re just going to monitor James as the week goes on. He’s the type of player we’ll give right to the last minute.
“We’ll get the treatment in to him and see how it goes.
“It’s how we perform. The performance will bring the result. You need a real mental resilience and drive to deal with the pressure of the game.
“That’s fine. But you need to have a framework there. They can have comfort in knowing how they can approach it, how they’ve had success in previous games. The little issues we’ve had in previous games, we know how to address them.
“It’s about going in with that belief to take out the game plan. Within that the individual quality might come through, someone can pop up with a goal out of nothing with a moment of magic.
“But you need to be solid and organised.
“We have to be on the front foot and aggressive, because that’s when we are at our best, and that’s hopefully when the goals come as well.”
Kennedy insists Celtic are flying again going in to Sunday after finding their shooting boots in recent weeks in thumping wins against Falkirk and Livi.
He told Celtic TV: “It does give us confidence. From a performance point of view, it had been coming. We’d been doing so many good things in recent weeks in terms of our structure and organisation, we’re not giving too much away and have been in full control of games.
“We’ve been creating chances but sometimes the most difficult thing can be putting the ball in the net.
“A massive part of that is confidence. We’ve created enough opportunities to win games if you go back to the Dundee United, Aberdeen and Rangers matches.
“In the second half against Falkirk we showed real intent to go and finish off all the good play and we saw it for 90 minutes last weekend.
“It’s confidence and consistency to want to keep working and improving, eventually the quality comes through and that’s what happened.
“I was happy for the players to get the rewards because there’s only so many times I can drum it in that it’s going to come.
“It’s great to have that belief and confidence in the bank going in to the Rangers game.”
Kennedy is convinced Celts can get the job done in normal time at Ibrox but he revealed his squad will be ready if they need to go all the way to spot kicks.
The Hoops claimed the delayed Scottish Cup last December in a shootout against Hearts and the stand-in boss said: “We always do (practice penalties), particularly in the lead up to cup matches. We’ll make sure we don’t miss anything out.
“We hope it doesn’t get to that point and we go and win the game in 90 minutes.
“But you have to prepare for everything.”
