Celtic supervisor Brendan Rodgers hailed his gamers for assembly their Tynecastle problem with some “great soccer” in a 4-1 win over Hearts.
The cinch Premiership leaders restored their seven-point lead with a largely dominant show in entrance of 576 of their very own followers in a diminished allocation and greater than 17,000 Hearts supporters.
Matt O’Riley volleyed his sixth purpose of the season inside 4 minutes and Celtic remained in management. Daizen Maeda and Kyogo Furuhashi netted earlier than the 51st minute and Reo Hatate hit the submit with a penalty.
Lawrence Shankland pulled one again within the sixty fourth minute however substitute Tomoki Iwata fired his first purpose for Celtic to kill off any slim hopes of a comeback.
Rodgers mentioned: “It was necessary that we began the sport properly, and attempt to convey an vitality and pace to the sport which might make it troublesome for Hearts, as a result of I’ve been right here sufficient occasions to know that if you happen to don’t make a great begin right here it may be a problem.
“However the gamers performed some great soccer and labored ever so arduous.”
Celtic have now received six consecutive league matches and look like discovering extra fluidity of their play.
Rodgers mentioned: “It’s a relentless evolution, there’s not a vacation spot to the place we need to go, it’s simply continuous enchancment and discovering ranges and the massive factor is consistency.
“It’s clearly a really troublesome floor to come back to however I like challenges like this, coming to essentially hostile environments as a result of it’s a possibility so that you can present your worth as a group, coping with troublesome circumstances, and the gamers handled it ever so properly.
“The one criticism is we might have scored extra targets and managed the ball a bit higher after we scored the fourth purpose, so we didn’t need to run a lot.
“However total, after a global break, the place a whole lot of these guys have been a wee bit heavy-legged in direction of the top, a whole lot of journey, what they gave the sport was completely sensible.”
Hearts supervisor Steven Naismith bemoaned his facet’s begin and the way in which they allowed Celtic probabilities.
Naismith began with a optimistic line-up with Kenneth Vargas informed to run past Shankland and Alan Forrest and Alex Lowry supporting the entrance gamers. However their probabilities when undermined when O’Riley ran away from marker Calem Nieuwenhof and volleyed house Luis Palma’s lofted move.
“We gave up actually sloppy targets,” mentioned Naismith, whose group let slip a two-goal lead in opposition to Hibernian of their earlier match.
“That’s the final two video games that the targets we conceded aren’t on the degree the place we ought to be at and need to be at. How sloppy they have been and after we concede them is psychological.
“It doesn’t offer you an opportunity to get into the sport if you lose a purpose after three minutes. And that was the theme all through the sport, the targets are avoidable.
“Our depth after we are urgent and shutting down wasn’t ok and within the recreation there are split-seconds when gamers are making selections and finally they’re going to resolve if it’s a great motion or unhealthy motion. Each purpose we picked the mistaken motion.”
