Rangers boss Steven Gerrard has backed Alfredo Morelos to keep his cool and avoid another moment of Old Firm madness on Sunday.
The Colombian reaffirmed his importance to the Light Blues on Thursday night as his injury-time header fired Gers into the Europa League group stages.
But Gerrard insists Morelos has learned from that incident and praised the South American for cleaning up his act ahead of this season’s first showdown with Neil Lennon’s team.
Speaking ahead of Sunday’s Ibrox clash, he said: “There’s definitely been signs of maturity and improvement in his behaviour.
“I think he’s trying everything he can to improve that department in his game.
“We’re doing everything we can and so are the players to help him. He’s still young and will still make mistakes moving forward.
“But since that moment there’s definitely been a marked improvement.
“We don’t want to take the fire and competitive edge away from him because we believe that’s a big part of his game.
“All we ask is that people give him a chance out there and treat him like everybody else gets treated.
“But I’m really proud of his behaviour so far.”
Gers skipper James Tavernier has promised to protect his team-mate from any of their bitter rivals’ wind-up attempts.
He said: “Players will try and intimidate him during the game, but it’s up to all us senior lads just to try and keep him cool.
“We want him to be that fiery character on the pitch. It always brings out the best in him but so far this season he has been channelling it really well so hopefully that continues.”
“I think this just shows the resilience in the team,” said the right-back. “We’ve shown signs – in the Kilmarnock game – how we don’t stop until the final whistle and that was another big factor last night.
“We stick to the game plan and we wear teams down. We always create chances and we did that last night. The result is obviously a great boost for the squad and for the club.
“It’s obviously early, but we have started the season off really well and we always want to go into an Old Firm and get the three points no matter what. That’s our aim this Sunday.
“We have already hit the target of getting into the group stage of the Europa League, where we wanted to be. We now want to win our first Old Firm game.”
