Purpose And Penetration

Neil Lennon pinpoints the team attitude in both domestic and European action.

- Tony Connelly

CELTIC made it five wins from the first five games in the league this past weekend to equal a record Neil Lennon’s Celtic side set nine years ago. The manager has been delighted with his players’ performances so far this season and will now call upon them to continue that trend on the European stage as the Europa League group stages begin.

The international break brought a pause to Celtic’s excellent start to the new league campaign with the champions rounding off the first run of fixtures in style with a dominant 2-0 win over Rangers at Ibrox.

Rekindling that form after much of the squad has been away playing with their countries is always a challenge and Celtic had to do just that in unfavourable conditions against Hamilton on Saturday.

It was a perfect start with James Forrest opening the scoring early on with his seventh goal of the season. Going behind didn’t provoke Brian Rice’s side to come out in search of an equaliser, though. Instead, Hamilton sat in and defended in numbers for much of the game.

When the referee blew for full-time the score read 1-0. That scoreline would have surprised most fans who witnessed the opening few minutes and it failed to accurately reflect Celtic’s dominance throughout the 90 minutes.

Having had some time to reflect on the game, Neil Lennon was pleased to get the three points, given the challenges Celtic had to overcome in the game.

“I thought we played some outstanding stuff in the first half,” said the manager. “We got the early goal and you’re hoping that would open them up but they never really came out to interact with us. It was just really a case of trying to break them down and get the second goal. Jamesy was unlucky with the second attempt because the keeper made a great save under the crossbar.