Scott McDonald headed Celtic ahead after 23 minutes with his 16th goal of the campaign and it looked like the visitors had everything under control at the break.

But a second-half turnaround saw United’s Spanish striker Francisco Sandaza score twice in 10 minutes to put the Taysiders ahead and it was a frantic Celtic side who were glad of Naylor’s wonderful volley from the edge of the box, which kept them three points above the Light Blues.

Flood, who signed for the Parkhead club in January from United, came on as a second-half substitute for Shunsuke Nakamura.

“It’s important for us to kill games off – and, once we do that, then the points will come,” he said.

“Tannadice is one of the toughest places outside the Old Firm to go to.

“So it was probably a point gained, because we were 2-1 down. But we played really well in the first half and we were thinking we should easily go on and win this game.

“It’s down to a little bit of luck, nerves, lack of concentration, a bit of everything.

“We just need to work hard in training and get ourselves ready for the next game.”

The Irishman is adamant it is not the threat of Rangers that is at the forefront of the players’ minds.

He said: “We don’t really worry about them.

“Once we have won our games, they can win six or seven nothing – it doesn’t really matter.

“We just need to concentrate on ourselves and it’s definitely a strong position we are in.

“Rangers would love to be in our shoes.

“If we could nick a few more wins and they can slip up again then we can go three or four points ahead before the league splits.”

Sandaza believes the United players tried to hold out for a 2-1 win rather than add to their lead when they were in the ascendancy.

He said: “We played really well in the second half – and, when I scored the second goal, maybe the team were afraid to score more goals.

“Maybe this is why Celtic had a lot of the ball and we started to defend more.”