James Tavernier says that Rangers’ performance against Celtic at the weekend has made him confident the Ibrox side can knock their city rivals out of the Scottish Cup, despite their 3-2 defeat at Celtic Park.
The Rangers captain scored twice on Saturday to bring up his century of goals for the club, but his contribution ultimately wasn’t enough for Michael Beale’s men to salvage anything from their trip across Glasgow.
Tavernier says he saw enough in his team’s showing though to give him heart that Rangers can gain a measure of revenge by storming into the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden.
“It’s disappointing to come away with nothing,” Tavernier said.
“We wanted to come away with three points.
“We’ve obviously got an important game against them in three weeks' time, so if we take the positives out of this game and apply ourselves in the same way – with a bit more – then I’m really confident in the team.
“Our next game, the St Mirren game, is important because we need a run of consistency going into the semi-final.
“It’s obviously a massive game in three weeks. But St Mirren is massive because we need to get back to winning ways and work on ourselves.
“But, yeah, three weeks’ time is obviously massive, and we’ve got to make sure we get in the final.”
Tavernier was pleased with the way that Rangers played at Celtic Park on the whole, saying that manager Beale got his tactics spot on, and he pinned the defeat on a combination of contentious refereeing calls and a lack of a clinical edge.
“I thought that the shape we had worked really well,” he said.
“After 15 minutes, we started getting the ball and moving it really well. We were frustrating them and creating our own chances.
“I felt we could have created more chances, but to go in at half-time 1-1 we felt we could go out there and do the same.
“We did when we started the second half really well. I didn’t feel Alfredo’s goal was a foul and then I felt the referee should maybe have been given an opportunity to look at it to see if it was a foul.
“Seeing their second goal coming off Jota’s arm and for that not to be looked at is obviously hard. But we as a team have got to look past those decisions and try and get it over the line ourselves.
“We’re just disappointed that we didn’t do it.”
Tavernier has also defended centre-backs Ben Davies and John Souttar, both of whom were culpable for errors that led to Celtic’s second and third goals, scored by Kyogo Furuhashi and Jota respectively.
Souttar had a moment to forget as he sold goalkeeper Allan McGregor short with a poor backpass for Jota to score that critical third goal, but Tavernier felt that Souttar performed well considering the injury-hit defender was making his first start since August in place of the sidelined Connor Goldson.
“I thought for Soutts to come in at the last minute, he had a really good game,” he said.
“But it’s just obviously small margins. I felt obviously the two goals that we conceded in the second half were…it’s obviously a hard one to take.
“It happens, but it’s a hard one to take. But predominantly throughout the game, they coped with it really well.”
