Dan Neil has revealed how Derek McInnes used a mix of tactical expertise and motivation to inspire Rangers to a massive derby victory.
The Ibrox side reached the semi-finals of the Premier Sports Cup, knocking out Cetic in the process at the same time as taking the first bragging rights of the season.
It was a dominant 3-0 victory in front of only home supporters, who were sent home thrilled.
Rangers went man-for-man out of possession, with James Penrice stepping into midfield to mark Benjamin Nygren out of the game.
Two-goal hero Neil has hailed McInnes' game plan, which the players were all on board with, as well as his motivating speech pre-match.
He said: “The gaffer made sure that we were ready to run through a brick wall.
“He is very good at team talks before the game and you’ve seen that in this game — everyone had each other’s backs from the first minute.
“Even at 3-0, we were still running around to see out the game.
“It was brilliant — a great team performance.
“The game plan that we worked on was carried out to an absolute tee.
“I thought we fully deserved the victory.
“We wanted to use that big crowd that we had behind us and really get after them.
“But we didn’t do it to the point where we left ourselves open.
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“We switched from being on a block to being man for man. The lads executed it perfectly.
“We all believed in the plan going into the game.”
McInnes added: Sometimes tactics can be overplayed and it can be looked at too much to deliver a winning performance.
“What normally wins games is individual performances more than tactics.
“And what we had today was performances.
“Ryan Naderi had as good a game as he’s had in a Rangers shirt, certainly from my time.
“He’s a boy that we had a wee bit of a fitness doubt yesterday. He had a dead leg thing going on, and I asked him yesterday how he felt, and he said it felt better than it did the day before.
“But he still felt that maybe it wasn’t going to be good enough to function properly.
“We spoke on Saturday night and again on Sunday morning, and he felt more good to go.
“I hate to think there would be a Rangers player that didn’t play in an Old Firm game because of a dead leg.
“But his performance was really strong.
“Naderi works and works and works. You want him to get his goals as a consequence of that, but he led the line.
“It was a strong performance, but it had to be.
“I’m delighted to get the club to the semi-final. I feel the performance we gave today was the one that was required to overcome a team like Celtic.
“I don’t think we had a failure and that’s what it takes to win.
“You see the strength of the club, both off the pitch and on the pitch.
“It does my players no harm at all, just for the ones who have been here, to understand what it means to so many.”
