Clive Lindsay, BBC Sport Scotland
Celtic left-back Greg Taylor does not expect it to be a defining moment in the title race even if his side beat Rangers at Ibrox on Monday to move 12 points clear of their city rivals in the Scottish Premiership.
“January seems quite early to be saying that, so we focus purely on the next game and it will be no different – regardless of the result on Monday,” the Scotland international said.
“We try to reach a level of performance and, if we can do that in every game, it will take care of results.”
Giovanni van Bronckhorst has been replaced with Michael Beale as Rangers manager since Celtic’s 4-0 win at home in September, but Taylor stressed that “we like to focus more on us no matter who the opponent is” rather than dwell on how the hosts might approach the game differently this time.
“We think we’ve got a strong way of playing and strong belief that we can hurt most teams and hopefully it is no different on Monday,” he said.
“It will probably be pretty hectic to start – that’s normally how it is until the game settles. We just need to focus on us and try to play our football from the first minutes and, if we do that, it normally stands us in good stead.”
Taylor thinks Celtic can draw inspiration from April’s experience, when they came from behind to win 2-1 at Ibrox, and thought that the recent return to fitness of captain Callum McGregor would be important as he is “so calm in the big moments no matter what game it is”.
Meanwhile, Taylor said “I am fit, feel good”, stressing that his early withdrawal in the 4-0 win over Hibernian was merely precautionary.
