McCulloch hails Gers keeper McGregor

LEE McCulloch today compared Allan McGregor to Rangers legend Andy Goram after the Ibrox keeper defied Celtic with a brilliant late save from Georgios Samaras.

In a game which was dominated by a rather wasteful home side, McCulloch popped up with an equaliser nine minutes from time, after Celtic substitute Scott McDonald had given the Hoops the lead.

But with minutes remaining and the home side again on the attack, McGregor stretched to tip a shot from Samaras over the bar to thwart Celtic in the way that Goram regularly did in the 1990s.

Such was the extent of the former Gers keeper in Old Firm clashes, the late Parkhead boss Tommy Burns once infamously quipped that he would have on his gravestone ‘Andy Goram broke my heart’.

“Samaras took the shot, it took a deflection off my foot and it was great save,” said McCulloch.

“McGregor has been different class this season and last season. When you have a guy like that in goals, you always hope he can pull off a save like that – so the comparison with Goram is good.”

Gers boss Walter Smith, who admitted his side were “fortunate” to escape with a point, is hoping to stave off bids from interested clubs for any of his players lest his options are limited further.

He said: “You could see with our bench, we don’t really have a lot of players available to us.

“We can’t really afford to lose any and the people running the club have already said that we don’t need to sell in January.

“More than anything, we need to get players back from injury.”