DAVID TURNBULL insists Celtic won’t give up in their quest for a tenth successive title.
The bid now looks doomed after the 1-0 reverse at Ibrox left Neil Lennon’s side 19 points adrift although they still have three games in hand.
The fates conspired in Govan to push the Hoops towards defeat with Leigh Griffiths having a shot pushed onto the post by Man-of-the-Match Allan McGregor, who made a handful of other crucial saves. After controlling the encounter for over an hour, Nir Bitton saw red in 62 minutes and eight minutes later Callum McGregor deflected a right-wing corner-kick past Vasilis Barkas for the only goal of the match.
Remarkably, Steven Gerrard’s side picked up three points without having a solitary shot on target all day.
It’s going to be an uphill struggle for the Parkhead outfit who have shipped 14 points this season – four more than their entire total last term. It’s not championship-winning form, but the midfielder, a £2.25million arrival from Motherwell in the summer, has vowed the players will not lose focus.
The team will spend this week in Dubai at a warm-weather training camp to prepare for the second half of the campaign which will kick off against Hibs in the east end of Glasgow a week tonight.
Turnbull has made an impact since pushing his claims in the first team last month and, speaking to the Daily Record, said: “Listen, the boys can take a lot of heart from the performance at the weekend and we will keep fighting and keep pushing.
“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.”
The classy Scotland Under-21 international playmaker added: “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. This team has shown it’s more than capable of going on winning runs and we need to find that level of consistency.
“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.”
