Celtic skipper Scott Brown is not anticipating another thrashing of Rangers when the two sides meet in the Betfred Cup semi-final at Hampden Park on Sunday.
The Hoops thumped their Glasgow rivals 5-1 in their Ladbrokes Premiership encounter at Celtic Park in September.
Brendan Rodgers' side will go to Hampden Park four points clear of Aberdeen at the top of the table and unbeaten domestically, albeit they lost 2-0 at home to Borussia Monchengladbach in the Champions League on Wednesday night.
But Brown believes the Light Blues have improved since their last meeting and is expecting a closer contest.
"They have been more solid and have a more steady team as well, it hasn't been chopped and changed," said the midfielder.
"It will be a lot tighter. Everyone thinks it is going to be three, four, five nothing for us again because we scored five goals, but it is going to be a lot harder game.
"But again, we have the pace and quality to score a couple of goals.
"They will have watched us closely in the last couple of weeks knowing this game was coming up.
"They will play a bit differently. I don't think they will be as open as they were at Celtic Park, but we will have to see what team they put out and who fancies it more on the day."
Rangers will take encouragement from last season's William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final at the national stadium when they beat Celtic in a penalty shoot-out after a 2-2 draw.
However, Brown insists the difference at the Parkhead club since Rodgers took over from Ronny Deila in the summer is "night and day."
"We have brought in some great players and that has helped," he said.
"We have pace all over the team.
"We have Moussa Dembele who is scoring goals as well, we have Griff (Leigh Griffiths) who scored 40 goals last season, so we are in a lot stronger place than what we were last season."
The former Hibernian player was still shrugging off the effects of the rather chastening defeat by an excellent Borussia Monchengladbach side.
The result left Celtic with one point from a possible nine ahead of the return game in Germany in two weeks' time.
With Barcelona and Manchester City still to play - the Hoops' point came in a 3-3 draw with the English outfit at Celtic Park last month - qualifying even for the Europa League looks a tall order for the Parkhead side.
However, Brown remains confident of playing European football in the new year as he looks for the Scottish champions to bounce back against Rangers.
He said: "We don't like to have a lot of downs at Celtic and let's hope Sunday isn't.
"Games are coming thick and fast and that is a good thing, especially after a defeat. You can start that momentum again and hopefully we can.
"We need to get on with it now. We can't be too disappointed about last night. They are a great team with the way they played from the back to the strikers and the midfield movement was exceptional.
"We created a couple of chances and lost two slack goals and on another day we could have maybe got a point.
"We still have a chance of getting European football after Christmas, but it is going to be hard. We are going to need to dig deep and results go our way as well.
"Going away from home has always been hard for us in the Champions League, but we have a new manager in charge now, so here's hoping we can go over there and do something."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel