An Old Firm afternoon ends with Walter Smith admitting that his Rangers side hadn't played particularly well, accepting that his Celtic rivals had the better of the opening period, and insisting that, despite a healthy lead for his team, there was no way the title race was effectively over. Apart from a few more lines creeping across Smith's face, the scene, the situation and the scuttlebutt could have been straight out of the 1990s.

Then, Smith would do a number on Celtic with every possible advantage in his favour. His played four, won four, no-goals- conceded record in derbies since he came back to Ibrox in January is his most impressive run in the fixture across his 12 years service because he came back into the job as the greatly disadvantaged manager. He has turned that on its head largely because he appears anointed in Old Firm games.

Not that he will have any truck with the notion the six-point and game-in-hand advantage his team hold over their city rivals means that the championship is on its way to Ibrox for the first time in three years.

"It is always easy for people on the outside to say these things, isn't it? You'll be rubbing your hands if we lose a couple of games," was Smith's response to suggestions that his side had struck a decisive blow in the Scottish Premier League this season. "It doesn't count for anything what anybody else says. If any team in Europe went to Celtic Park on a couple of occasions they couldn't turn around and say they were going to win. They don't lose many games so whatever gap we've got at the moment we will need and that is where we stand.

"It was important to get this result then and we just have to try and keep winning. We are in a far better position than we were last season but there is still just less than a quarter of the league season remaining."

The narky Smith only revealed himself once during yesterday's post-match interviews, the Rangers manager nippily remarked how his match-winner Kevin Thomson was "the only person I have seen carried off after nothing happening to him" – his take on the ankle injury sustained when the midfielder appeared to hurl himself forward in a bid to win a penalty.

It brought an early end to the day and a hospital visit for player who opened his goal account with a smartly worked and executed strike and also picked up booking that will see him suspended for the Glasgow clubs' next meeting on April 16. "The move for Kevin's goal was one of our only good moves of the first half," Smith said. "He is a terrific player, a boy who can impose himself on a game and is capable of playing anywhere in midfield."

Celtic, meanwhile, appear incapable of exhibiting any degree of conviction on and off the field, with Gordon Strachan's straw-clutching following his latest failure in the fixture lacking as much of an edge as his team. There was resignation in his tone as he snapped at the suggestion he would be looking for other teams to now do him favours.

"It is not Alex Ferguson you are talking to here," he said. "I'm not going to play those mind games with everybody else because they will turn it on you. Nobody does you any favours in this game, none whatsoever, trust me. We have put ourselves in the position that we are in. We have to hope that someone else does something for us to become champions and it is a horrible position to be in. It is better winning things by your own merit rather than hoping someone else does something for you.

"It is going to be very difficult to keep the title but we have two Old Firm games at home and if we play like we did in the first half then we have a chance. If we defend like we did today and Rangers get another chance then it could be a problem."

Strachan said that anyone without an agenda could recognise that his side were worthy of at least a point. He had no real explanation for why his team keeps failing to rustle up any of these, or even net-bulging moments each time they are ranged against Smith's rock-solid side. "After the first game here (the 3-0 defeat] we came away with a cloud hanging over us," he said. "But though we are hugely disappointed, but I go away thinking I have lots of good stuff to work with and, if we put one or two things right, the makings of a right good side."

Strachan's Celtic appear to have the makings of little whenever Smith is around.