Arne Engels convinced Celtic wouldn't have lost if Rangers had been awarded penalty

ARNE Engels has stated the focus in the aftermath of Celtic’s dramatic Premier Sports Cup final victory should have been on James Forrest becoming Scotland’s joint most decorated player.

And the Belgian midfielder insisted the Scottish champions could still have triumphed even if Rangers had been awarded a penalty in the second period of extra-time when the scoreline was 3-3.

Fans of the Ibrox club were furious when no spot kick was given after a Liam Scales pull on Vaclav Cerny inside his area – and SFA head of refereeing Willie Collum admitted on Friday the mistake was “unacceptable”.

However, Engels felt that Celtic, whose winger Forrest moved alongside Lisbon Lion Bobby Lennox in the medals table with his 25th trophy success, were worthy winners at the end of the epic encounter.

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The £11m signing stressed that he would have been confident of his side bouncing back and levelling again if their opponents had been given a penalty which they converted. 

“I’m not aware of everything that’s been said,” he said. “But last Sunday we showed that we’re a really good team who can perform in the big games. We deserved to win it and that’s why we were on the podium. That’s all that matters.

(Image: SNS Group) “Is it a shame that people are talking about other things? James Forrest equalled a record by winning the trophy, he has so many medals now and is a quality player. If there needs to be something said after Sunday, it should be about him.

“If Rangers had got a penalty and scored, we could still have come back and won the game, 100 per cent. We’ve already shown that a few times, that we can come back.

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“We won the cup, which is the most important thing. I don’t want to talk about anything else. We’ve shown that we have such a strong squad who performs in the big occasions.”

Engels added: “It’s a case of winning one trophy and it’s on to the next one. That’s our mentality here. Nobody at this club really cares about what other people say about us. We only look at ourselves.

“We know what goals we have for the rest of the season and that’s what we’re working towards. A really strong part of our squad is that we don’t look at other things, only ourselves. We want to improve every day together.”