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Ferguson confident of keeping Celtic in sights

Gavin McAfferty
Monday 26 November 2007 01:00 GMT
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The Rangers captain, Barry Ferguson, believes his side can keep the pressure on the Scottish Premier League leaders, Celtic, by winning games they would have lost last season.

Rangers stayed three points behind their rivals after a hard-fought 3-1 win at Falkirk on Saturday. Carlos Cuellar and Jean-Claude Darcheville put Rangers 2-0 up before the hour but the Bairns came back, the substitute Pedro Moutinho scoring after 62 minutes. However, Kris Boyd, a late replacement, scored just before full time to seal Rangers' first away win in the league since a visit to Kilmarnock on 25 August.

"We were in control of the game at 2-0 and that's something we'll need to have a chat about," Ferguson said. "But last season we'd have lost that game and this season [we didn't]. My only main concern is that we're winning games."

Rangers now head to Germany for tomorrow's vital Champions League fixture against the Bundesliga champions, Stuttgart.

Mark Brown has assured Celtic supporters that he is ready for a Champions League test if the club's first-choice goalkeeper, Artur Boruc, fails to recover from a toe problem for the visit of Shakhtar Donetsk on Wednesday.

Brown stepped in at the last minute on Saturday after Boruc had problems kicking the ball in the warm-up for the home match against Aberdeen. The former Motherwell and Inverness goalkeeper did not have a serious shot to save in a 3-0 victory.

After the match he insisted he was in good shape to face the Ukrainian side. Brown's outing against Aberdeen was his first appearance for the first team since playing in a 1-1 Champions League qualifying draw at Spartak Moscow on 15 August.

He said: "It's not like I was inactive [since then]. I have played a lot of reserve games and you do the same training. The standard of the opponents goes up from the reserves but you just have to get on with that and not worry about it.

"[Artur] didn't train on Friday. I knew he was struggling since he came back from Poland," Brown added.

"I knew there was a chance I would play but you have to be ready anyway, you have to prepare to play."

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