To the delight of the home crowd, Rangers went ahead in the 35th minute when Ferguson ran onto a superb pass from Reyna, controlled the ball, and drilled his shot into Douglas' right hand corner.

Celtic levelled matters early in the second half with Larsson sneeking in front of Bert Konterman to head a Thompson header past Stefan Klos, the Rangers goalkeeper.

Rangers responded superbly however, and regained the lead on the hour mark. De Boer sent a terrific corner to the far post and when Albertz's header rebounded from the crossbar, Flo was on hand to claim the debut goal he had predicted beforehand.

Celtic's hopes of a result all but disappeared a short while later when Thompson was dismissed for a second booking, both cautions being administered for dangerous tackles on Ferguson.

De Boer put the game beyond Celtic's reach in the 68th minute when he connected brilliantly with an Albertz corner, and a subsequent corner in the 77th minute led to Amoruso heading past Douglas to make the fourth.

Subsitute Michael Mols rounded off the scoring with five minutes to go and with arguably the goal of the match. As Rangers broke from defence, Albertz found space in the middle of the park and sent a fabulous ball out to de Boer on the right wing. The Dutchman's first time cross was met by an unstoppable Mols drive from the edge of the six yard box.