Delighted David McCallum has saluted his Rangers B-team heroes after they wiped the floor with rivals Celtic in front of a bumper crowd.
Alex Lowry, Robbie Fraser and Ross McCausland all netted for Rangers in the first half as 10,000 supporters watched the Ibrox youngsters leapfrog their opponents in the Lowland League table with a 3-0 win.
And the man who filled the first-team breach after Steven Gerrard left was chuffed with the way his side played in front a noisy home support.
And he admits it was a euphoric atmosphere inside the dressing room after a comprehensive win over their fiercest foes.
Speaking on the club website, McCallum said: “As you can imagine, the boys are as high as kites. It’s well deserved, I think that it was a strong performance and a brilliant start. We wanted to be really aggressive out of possession and for Ross McCausland to go and do that early in the game was a start you wouldn’t have imagined. We stayed on it and that was important.
“(Ross McCausland’s goal) set the tone in terms of how the players believe how they want to play when they don’t have the ball. I thought our out of possession work was excellent and we carried an aggressive threat to pressure Celtic really quickly.
“It’s also important to have the the limited opportunities in our box, I don’t think that Jay [Hogarth] had an awful lot to do in terms of making saves. Murray Miller in the middle of the pitch was just the glue that made the team be what it was, it was a strong midfield performance. It was a strong defensive performance, when you’re in these types of games you have to be strong.”
McCallum admits there were plenty of tactical conundrums to ponder after his side raced into a commanding lead at the break.
And he is urging his charges to finish the season strongly with a return fixture against Celtic looming.
He added: "We had to focus on us, but we spent time talking about what we wanted our second-half performance to look like. I thought we started well and had a few opportunities, it’s not something we can complain about we still had some decent moments. It was about making sure that our levels were maintained, and we stayed on the front foot.
“We’ve got roughly five games in the league potentially; we want to finish them strongly and we still have to play Celtic away. It’s important to mention the supporters today, it was fantastic for the lads to get that support from the stand. You could feel it before the game, you could sense it during the game – they were willing the boys on and supporting them and it’s important to engage in that.”
