ERIK Sviatchenko, the Celtic centre half, last night urged Mark Warburton, the Rangers manager, to watch a re-run of the Betfred Cup semi-final after dismissing his claim that the gulf in quality between the Glasgow clubs had closed.

Warburton, whose team had been beaten 5-1 at Parkhead in a Ladbrokes Premiership match last month, suggested the 1-0 defeat his side suffered at Hampden on Sunday highlighted that “the so-called gap is a lot narrower than people think”.

Yet Sviatchenko, who had a second half goal chalked off by referee Craig Thomson, disagreed with that assessment even though his side had only won the game 1-0 thanks to a Moussa Dembele winner in the 87th minute.

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The Dane revealed that the most difficult game he has played with Brendan Rodgers’s side domestically this season is still a league game against Dundee – who are rooted to the bottom of the top flight table – at Dens Park at the start of this month.

“I think he (Warburton) should see the game again maybe once more,” he said. “I think we were much better in all aspects. They had maybe two, three, four minutes where they had the ball in the 90 minutes.

"They are a good team, but throughout the 90 minutes we were the much better team. I really didn’t feel like it was going the wrong way at any time. I just felt that if we had kept on going the goal would come. It wasn’t just me who had that belief, it was the entire 11 players on the pitch.

“We believed we could take the game before it went to extra-time and penalties. Because we were dominant and because we were pushing and pushing and pushing, that is why we were rewarded in the end.

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“I think Dundee away was a difficult game. They played well as they always do when we play against them. Don’t get me wrong, Sunday was not an easy game. That is not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that we were the better team, we were pushing, we were dominant and we could have scored a lot more goals than just one.”

Rodgers, whose team will take on Aberdeen in the Betfred Cup final at Hampden on November 27, agreed with his player’s evaluation of the game.

“I felt we were dominant in the game,” he said. “I’m not massively into numbers and statistics but virtually every statistic on Sunday was actually better than the 5-1 game.

“We had more possession of the ball, we had more efforts on goal and had more corners. The only thing that was down was shots. We had eight shots on target on Sunday and in the 5-1 game we had nine.

“Mathematically the gap went down, from 5-1 to 1-0. So maths will tell you it went down. But if Mark is happy with his performance then as a coach and manager that’s all you’re looking at. I can only look at it from a Celtic perspective and I think it was shown that we were pretty dominant in the game. For us, I was pleased with then performance.”

Sviatchenko believes the performance against Rangers at the weekend once again illustrated how much Celtic had improved, in terms of their fitness as well as their all-round play, since Rodgers took over as manager during the summer.

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The 25-year-old is hopeful the condition that he and his team mates, who are halfway through a punishing run of seven games in three weeks, are in will enable them to compete in all of the tournaments they are involved in during the 2016/17 campaign.

“We showed we were able to maintain the physicality that needs to be maintained,” he said. “Compared to the game that we played last season at Hampden against Rangers, when we were struggling after 60 minutes, we were much better. We just kept going. In the end, we got the late winner. It was good.

“To be in physical good shape is just alpha omega in football. You just need to be at the highest level if you want to compete in different tournaments. We are competing in four tournaments at the moment. If we want to be able to do good things in different tournaments you need to have good physical shape. We proved we had that on Sunday.”

Meanwhile, Sviatchenko has appealed to Dembele, who took his tally for the season to 14 with his late strike against Rangers, to maintain his high performance levels, starting in the Ladbrokes Premiership match against Ross County in Dingwall tomorrow night.

“He has a great potential and he is only 20 years old,” he said. “For Moussa, it’s about keeping that high level every time. Young players sometimes drop their performances. But he’s proven he can maintain that high level. For him, the team and everyone around Celtic it’s good to have a striker like that.”