Following Sunday’s fixture against Derby Country, the matchwinner, Nikola Katic, spoke to RangersTV.
Unsurprisingly, though, the defender wasn’t getting carried away. In fact, quite the opposite.
The 22-year-old comes across as a very level-headed individual for his age. Therefore, rather than waxing lyrical about his decisive goal, he talked more about his mistake from the week previous.
Katic inadvertently helped to set up Lewis Travis’ equaliser for Blackburn at Ibrox last Sunday and that error was clearly still playing on his mind heading into the Derby fixture.
Rangers stopper Nikola Katic holds his hands up
“It was a really tough game for us and I am happy as I scored for us to win,” he told RangersTV. “We are happy with our performances in pre-season and we will push and keep going.
“I’m happy I have improved from the last game where I made the mistake and we conceded the only goal of pre-season. I was sad because of that, but today I am happier that we kept the clean sheet and if you ask me, I think we should have scored more goals but their goalkeeper was outstanding today and I am really proud of the performance of the boys today.”
Katic is already a hugely popular figure amongst the Ibrox faithful. Bears campaigned at length last season for him to be reinstated to the team after he had fallen out of favour.
He has his work cut out this season after the signings of Filip Helander and George Edmundson. Yet, going forward, if he can keep popping up with goals at Ibrox and speaking as frankly as this about his own performances, his popularity will only increase further.
