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17 min Celtic get the ball down and play, Benjamin Nygren drifting out left and winning a corner. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain steps up and whips in a decent delivery, which is just about cleared.
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15 min Yang gets forward and slips in Daizen Maeda, but his first touch is poor and his attempted cutback is intercepted and cleared.
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13 min Kieran Tierney lofts a cross-field ball to Yang Hyun-jun, but Tuur Rommens wins the battle for possession. Celtic are struggling to put together a passing move at the moment.
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12 min Moore wins a corner with more nice footwork. He takes it, but can only direct it on to the roof of the net.
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10 min Celtic win a couple of corners. The first is cleared, while the second ends with a Rangers counter-attack that almost results in a goal after Moore, showing beautiful footwork, gets in behind and stands the ball up at the far post. Chermiti can’t quite stretch far enough.
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GOAL! Rangers 1-0 Celtic (Chermiti 8)
What a finish. Rangers stroke the ball around the box before Andreas Skov Olsen scoops in an inviting cross. Youssef Chermiti smashes it into the back of the net with a spectacular overhead kick. Not a bad way to take the lead.
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7 min Moore is flattened by a thunderous shoulder-charge from Julián Araujo. He gets a talking to.
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6 min There’s chaos in the box at a Rangers corner, but the flag goes up for offside before anyone can get a decisive touch.
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5 min Dane Murray gets a crucial block in after a whipped shot from Moore. It’s been a frantic start.
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3 min Mikey Moore whips in a dangerous low cross from the left flank, but Callum McGregor reads it and intercepts smartly.
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1 min Nicolas Raskin lofts a pass from left to right, finding Tochi Chukwuani in an acre of space. His first touch lets him down, however, and the angle narrows, his cross-shot landing safely in the gloves of Sinisalo.
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Kick-off!
We’re under way at Ibrox amid a deafening roar, Rangers getting us started.
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The teams are in the tunnel. We’re about to get up and running.
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We’ve got our first bit of email correspondence (keep it nice please). “As a neutral, I basically want this game to produce whatever result is best for Hearts,” says Joshua Keeling. “I’m really rooting for them to pull this off.”
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O’Neill has also had his say to Celtic TV. Asked how he’s feeling before the game, he says: “My normal [feeling]. I’m excited, obviously nervously excited, about the game, hoping that we do well in the match, and to a certain extent looking forward to it.
“We’ll have to show all the same characteristics [as we did in the second leg against Stuttgart], plenty of resilience, plenty of determination, all of those particular things which are really important in any football game, but particularly here at Ibrox.”
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Röhl has been chatting away on Rangers TV before the match. “We’re looking forward for this game, it will be an exciting game,” he said. “We want to perform well, we want to show our fans a good game and, of course, we try everything to win this game. It would be a fantastic afternoon for us, and for this we prepared the whole week.
“I expect that at first the game will be very even. There will be a lot of duels, it could be that also sometimes there’s no rhythm in the game. All those things are what I expect. But I want to see a good team who is organised from our side, looking forward, attacking forward. [We must] have some good actions because it’s important that we win the crowd straight behind us in moments to create a good atmosphere.”
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Team news
For reference, Schmeichel has not returned to the Celtic lineup. Here are the teams:
Rangers: Butland, Sterling, Souttar, Fernandez, Rommens, Chukwuani, Raskin, Skov Olsen, Moore, Chermiti, Naderi
Celtic: Sinisalo, Araujo, Murray, Scales, Tierney, McGregor, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Nygren, Yang, Maeda, Adamu
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Updated at 06.28 EST
Unsurprisingly, there has been some needle in the buildup to this match. After Röhl said it would be “interesting” to see whether Kasper Schmeichel would return to the Celtic lineup after a strong performance from Viljami Sinisalo against Stuttgart in midweek, Martin O’Neill was not best pleased. “So he is picking our team? Well done old Danny. He’s only in less than a year,” said the Celtic manager. “I have to laugh. He’s made a comment about the picking of our team? Absolutely extraordinary. He hasn’t been in Glasgow long. There’s no need for him commenting on my team.”
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Plus, Barney Ronay on this season’s three-way Scottish title race. “For once this is not a title decider. It could be a title eliminator. It could be a step towards neither of Celtic or Rangers winning the league for the first time in 41 years. A draw in Glasgow could leave Hearts six points clear at the top. But by now it is a startling transformation whatever the outcome.”
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Updated at 06.21 EST
If you’re looking for some pre-match reading, here’s our match report from Hearts’ win against Aberdeen, with Sir Alex Ferguson in attendance, and Ewan Murray’s preview on this game.
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Preamble
It could be a seismic day for the Scottish title race, this. When Rangers host Celtic in a derby at the sharp end of the season, it’s usually a given that one or the other is top of the table. Instead, with Hearts edging out Aberdeen yesterday, second-place Rangers are now seven points off the summit, with Celtic nine points off the pace in third. Danny Röhl’s side have a game in hand on Hearts and Celtic have two but, regardless, they are running out of chances to haul in the table toppers. Victory today could make all the difference. It doesn’t get much bigger than this.
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