Brendan Rodgers hailed Celtic’s traditional never-say-die spirit following their late 2-1 cinch Premiership win over St Mirren at Parkhead.
Saints attacker Conor McMenamin headed the visitors in front in the seventh minute but returning Hoops midfielder David Turnbull levelled in the 18th minute with a fine strike before hitting the post with a penalty just before the half-hour mark.
The league leaders kept chipping away in the second half and eventually got their reward in the 83rd minute when South Korean attacker Oh Hyeon-gyu took a pass from fellow substitute Odin Thiago Holm and fired high past excellent Buddies goalkeeper Zach Hemming.
The Celtic boss smiled as he said: “It was coming.”
He added: “Listen, it’s one of those ones – you know the game lasts 90 plus minutes so you trust your team.
“They’ve scored late goals already this season. It’s the make-up of this club to keep going and persevere.
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“I was really just pleased with the quality of the winning goal. We saw that at Motherwell when we got that winner (Matt O’Riley) late on.
“With 80-odd minutes on the clock here, you can start to panic but we worked the ball really well.
“The goal was terrific. Of course, you can never be sure but I trust the team that they will keep going until the end and when you do that opportunities will come.
“It’s part of the value of this team – that ability to keep going. When you bring in players you are always looking for players who have that resilience in their make-up.
“It’s part of what you do when you recruit a player. When you play for a club like this one, there’s no choice – you keep fighting, you keep running and allow your quality to come through and that’s exactly what happened.
“We had a penalty and Kyogo (Furuhashi) had a chance as well. So we could have been more comfortable in the scoreline.
“At 2-1, you just want to grind it out and get the result.”
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