Ange Postecoglou insists his character-filled Celtic won’t shirk away from driving strongly over the title finishing line.
The Aussie’s team took a huge step towards clinching the title with a fighting draw against Rangers.
Postecoglou is refusing to accept his team have unassailable advantage with six points and 19 goals in their favour and only three matches to go.
But the manager knows it’s close. He’s full of admiration for the guts and temperament of the troops as they move towards the flag.
And Postecoglou is convinced his boys can meet his demands to storm over the line in the next 13 days as they gain priceless experience.
Asked about the lead, he said: “I don’t know about unassailable, but we are in a strong position.
“We haven’t shirked away from the fact that our goal was to be champions this year and we are in a great position to do that.
“Our job now is to finish it off and make sure we finish the season strongly.
“We have three games to go, two of them at home. From our perspective it gives us a great opportunity to take advantage of the position we are in.
“We don’t want to sort of just get there, we want to finish strong.
“We had a big challenge. Okay we didn’t win the game, but we didn’t lose it either. That was always going to be the key.
“We haven’t lost for a very long time in the league. This group has always embraced every challenge without fear or favour.
“The boys are not jubilant. They understand that they had to work hard to get something out of it.
“We will keep improving as a team, but the character they are showing at the moment, that’s priceless.
“That’s what is going to hold us in good stead, not just for this year, but for years to come if we keep having that mentality of taking on every challenge and making sure we don’t yield and don’t give up at any stage.
“I think they are a determined lot and they are determined to finish the season strongly.”
Celtic were on the brink of going nine points clear after leading through Jota.
But a couple of Daizen Maeda misses prevented the lead being doubled and Fashion Sakala’s equaliser denied the hosts victory.
Postecoglou said: “It was a tense game which you would expect with so much on the line and the consequences of the result.
“We scored and had some great chances to go two or three up, but didn’t take them. It was a great goal we scored, I thought Daizen was outstanding.
“We had two or three really good opportunities after that and normally we would be pretty efficient with the shooting.
“Rangers fought their way back into the game and, once they scored, they got a bit of momentum.
“They had nothing to lose so they were going to throw men forward, but the boys still showed their resilience,
“Joe [Hart] has made a couple of great saves and we got a result out of it.
“I am sure they feel they could have won the game, I feel we could have won the game, but I don’t think one side dominated.
“It was a bit of an arm wrestle which you kind of expect when there are such massive consequences on the outcome.”
Celtic showed guts to dig deep in the final stages to see it through and the manager told the dressing room afterwards that there's so much more to come from his side.
Postecoglou added : “I keep reflecting on the fact this group has been put together in the last eight or nine months and for a lot of them it’s their first real year of expectation and pressure.
“You only gain experience by going through it and I thought at times we were just a little bit tense.
“Again I think that’s because, for the most part, they are a young group. Even in terms of average age.
“I always temper my analysis with an understanding of where we are as a group in the first year of being together, playing against a team that’s been together for three years and were champions last year. They’re a good side
“Whatever we’ve got this year we’ve had to earn. It’s not like we were the stand-out team with no one to challenge us this year.
“It’s a pretty strong opponent, as you saw, that we had to overcome through the course of this year. This was another challenge for us and we got through it.
“We will learn from it. I said to the players after the game, we have so much more growth to do as a football team, but you can’t question their character.
“Even when things aren’t going well, they have found a way to hang in there, found that moment or that resilience to get the job done.
“To me that’s a lot harder to find than improving them in aspects of their play.”
