Ange Postecoglou has backed his Celtic players to cope with an Ibrox cauldron – and insists they’ve now got the firepower to blast them to the title.
The Parkhead club face Rangers in a critical Old Firm derby, three points clear at the top of the Premiership.
A Celtic victory will see Postecoglou get one hand on the trophy with just six league games left.
But they’ll have just 700 fans to Gers’ 50,000 in the stadium
And on Postecoglou’s first visit to Govan in August he left with a 1-0 defeat.
The Celtic boss believes his team are a different proposition now, though, and insists they’ll handle the atmosphere.
With Japanese star Kyogo Furuhashi fit again, he’s confident that their ‘multiple threats’ in attack can get them a positive result.
When asked about whether he can trust his Celtic players to deal with the Ibrox environment, Postecoglou said: “When you think about what we’ve had to deal with this year and the position we’re in right now, we’ve proved to be a pretty resilient group of players.
“You can’t do that unless you have a really strong mentality and have tackled every challenge in the right way.
“It doesn’t guarantee you success but it gives you a chance in every game.
“The players have a really strong sense of purpose now about the type of football we want to play - and the type of team we want to be.
“No-one can say this group of players has had an easy run at any stage this season.
“You just have to look at our line-up on our first visit to Ibrox.
“We had players who were literally transferred down south straight after the game (Odsonne Edouard and Ryan Christie).
“We knew they were going but that was the team we had to put out that day.
“Whatever challenges we face on Sunday, we’ll have options.
“That will help us because we don’t need to rely on one or two.
“It’s fair to say that in the early part of the season we had to rely on Kyogo and David Turnbull in an attacking sense.
“Jota and Liel Abada helped at different times too.
“But right now, we have multiple threats and multiple creative avenues.
“Our subs will be important, not just for Sunday but for the run-in.
“That’s helped our recent form because we finished strongly in all of our games.
“I’m putting on some really quality players who are embedded in the principles of our play.”
The bookies have installed Rangers as 6/4 favourites for Sunday's clash, despite Celtic’s 3-0 hammering in February’s derby at Parkhead.
But Postecoglou says he’s confident going into the Ibrox showdown.
He said: “I wasn’t aware of that (Rangers favourites). I’m not a betting man so I’m not really sure what that means.
“But since round six in the fixtures this season, we’ve been pretty decent.
“So I’ll take our form into any game at the moment.”
