Success has answered our critics, says McLeish

Alex McLeish believes his side's backs-to-the-wall CIS Cup final victory over Celtic had answered the critics who had been questioning their credentials. His side wiped away the bad memories of a poor league defeat at Parkhead last week. The Rangers manager said: "It was a hard-fought one. The first half we were fantastic and I felt we thoroughly deserved the lead that we had.

"The second half we maybe tried to protect it a little too much, but I thought there were no failures today. There were three or four players last week who didn't play as well as they can. Today they stood up and there was a reaction despite being written off by all and sundry. I think we got that wake-up call."

Martin O'Neill said he feared for the treble after Chris Sutton was taken off with what proved to be a broken wrist and the Celtic manager vented his anger at the linesman David Doig after he wrongly flagged John Hartson offside before he fired what he thought was the equaliser.

"John is very disappointed at missing the penalty," O'Neill added, "but there's no blame attached whatsoever. I don't know why he took it, maybe at that particular moment he might have fancied it – I didn't want to ask him because it didn't matter."