Dundee United defender Garry Kenneth has dismissed Neil Lennon’s Parkhead paranoia ahead of the Tannadice club’s clash with Rangers on Tuesday night.
The Celtic boss has indicated he will be “watching with interest” to see if United and other opponents of Walter Smith’s men in the title run-in give their all against the Ibrox club.
He observed on Friday, “Dundee United want Rangers to win the league by all accounts” a reference to a comment attributed to United striker David Goodwillie at an awards ceremony.
The point Goodwillie was making was that should Rangers win the title and Celtic the Scottish Cup, the Tangerines will qualify for Europe.
Kenneth, who helped Peter Houston’s men to a 4-0 win over Motherwell at the weekend, saw the funny side of his team-mate’s remarks, joking, “That sums Goodie up doesn’t it?” But he was deadly serious when he vehemently rebutted the notion that United might give anything less than their all.
“He (Lennon) can say what he wants really,” Kenneth said. “We can only do our best on the pitch and if that’s not good enough we’ll hold our hands up.
“He can’t really moan I gave Celtic a goal last Sunday! It doesn’t matter what you say, somebody’s going to feel hard done by it.
“We’ll just be trying to win the game on Tuesday and, if we don’t, at least we gave it our best shot.”
United’s fighting spirit has been their hallmark this season, with goals in the dying minutes game after game proof of that.
“There’s no chance of us not giving 100%. Not this team,” the centre-back pointed out. “Even if we’re having a bad day we give 110% and work our hardest to get things right.
“We want to finish third. We don’t want to rely on Rangers winning the league. What if they do that and then Motherwell win the cup? For us we want to finish third and that’s all there is to it.
“We’ve got two massive games left to get ourselves back into Europe where we were this season. We want to be back on that stage and progress further than we did last time.”