Jota insists Celtic gained no extra confidence from Saturday’s victory over Rangers in the Scottish Premiership – because Ange Postecoglou’s side are already full of it.
The Portuguese winger was on target alongside Kyogo Furuhashi as the Scottish Champions defeated their Glasgow city rivals 3-2 at a packed-out Parkhead.
The derby fixture was the first of two this month with the sides meeting again at Hampden Park on April 30 in a Scottish Cup semi-final, and Jota insists the weekend’s result will have no bearing on the upcoming national stadium showdown.
He explained: “Absolutely not, every game is different. What happened on Saturday is just one game and the next one in the semi-final will be a completely different one and we just need to be ready for it.
“Our confidence comes from the daily work. It does not come from this week or the win a few weeks earlier or whatever. It comes from what we have been doing from day one because there is a foundation and there is a strong base in the background.
“That is what we aim for. We are secure on that because we know there is something strong to build on and we just want to keep on pushing until the end of the season.”
There is currently a lot of talk surrounding 'the gap' between Glasgow’s big two, but Jota refused to be drawn on the question. He responded: “We just focus on ourselves to start with. We have our ideas and our philosophies, and we work according to that.
“Ange has a system that we need to follow and work with and then it is all about the creativity and the talent of every player in our team, so yes we focus on ourselves and we do our own thing.
“We know that this game is always tough and it is very good to play because there is always a great atmosphere and something new happening every second.
“For us as football players and for the fans that is what you want to see in a football game and Saturday was no different.”
Asked if the Scottish Premiership title race was now over, Jota added: “No, absolutely not. There’s still a lot of games to play. We just focus game after game because we already know how football works.
“We cannot sleep on it. We are just going to keep on working hard and deliver performances every week.”
