‘Understrength defence could not have played any better’
were a goal down. There are many ways to skin a cat, you know? This is a derby, it’s competitive, you have to fight fire with fire, you have to quell the crowd. We did that to perfection today.
“From my own experience, that’s [pressuring the other team] what you have to do at times. Steven may change his way as he goes along. But, for this fixture today, we felt it was the right way to go about our business. With the players we have, it worked in our favour.”
Both Kristoffer Ajer and Jozo Simunovic were unavailable through injury and Nir Bitton, who excelled again in defence, didn’t get through the second half which meant Mortiz Bauer coming off the bench to make his Celtic debut ar right back.
Lennon said: “We’ve got Kris Ajer out. We’ve got Jozo Simunovic out. Nir is what you would call an auxiliary centre-half – but he’s played brilliantly this week. While he was on the pitch, he was outstanding. To then lose him at a crucial time of the game, it’s obviously concerning.
“But Moritz came on and Hatem filled in superbly. I can’t speak highly enough of the players, they were absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t have asked any more. It was the perfect performance. It was really hard professional football, today, with quality.”
Grey Taylor’s long-expected move from Kilmarnock should be completed over the next few days. A £1.5million fee has been agreed for the 21-year-old.
Lennon confirmed: “Hopefully. There is a bit of a hold-up but not through our end. It’s third party so we’ll see how that develops.
“But Bolingoli can be absolutely delighted with his performance, having been written off – more or less – in every single game so far. I hope that really kick starts his season because he’s shown a lot of good qualities today.”
There was a fracas of sorts after the second goal when the Celtic bench celebrated in front of Rangers fans.
All Lennon would say on it was: “I didn’t see it. I was halfway down the pitch at the time. It happens, so I’m not going to comment on it. The stewards were on it very quickly, so there’s nothing to report.”