‘DEMBELE WILL BE FINE,’ INSISTS RODGERS

The Frenchman was hobbling at the end of a fiery encounter where he was up against man-mountain defender Kevin Gomis.

Dembele was seen clutching his hamstring and had to be helped to his feet at the final whistle, the Hoops boss insists the Under-21 international should be fine.

Rodgers said: “He just overstretched a little bit towards the end, but I think he’s fine.”

The Parkhead gaffer was relieved to come away with full points after a result which moves the champions to within one victory of the league title.

Goals from Jozo Simunovic and Stuart Armstrong appeared to have Celtic cruising, but sub Fassail El Bakhtaoui thumped in a stunning strike for the Tayside outfit 16 minutes from time.

Rodgers added: “We showed a lot of elements to our game today. We played good football at times.

“Good control of the game, we never created too much in the first-half, but still deserved to be in front.

“The second-half, we scored a great goal to go 2-0 up and I felt after that we had chances to close the game out. And then we just lost our positioning a little bit.

“We made a mistake to let them score the goal which was a great strike and then at 2-1 we had to show a different side to our game because Dundee were quite direct from then on.

“We had to defend our box and win headers and the players did that.

“We had to show fight and mentality, but we did that. It was a great victory.”