Celts’ deadly duo may be starting to click at just the right time
Celtic boss Neil Lennon heaped praise on Odsonne Edouard after watching his French striker star against Hamilton Accies.
Edouard scored once and set up two to help his side reduce the gap with Rangers to 16 points ahead of the derby on Saturday.
“I thought Odsonne looked great today, the best he’s looked for a while,” he said.
“He looked free and his quality was there for everyone to see. The whole team functioned well, I couldn’t fault any of them.
“Their application and quality was great. We could have won the game by a lot more.
“It’s the quality of chances we’re creating now, which we weren’t doing previously. We’re looking a lot more like ourselves.
“I’m pleased with the partnership of Odsonne and Leigh, they’ve come together again at a good time.
“They showed great link up play for Leigh’s first chance which the keeper saved then he was unlucky with a header off the post.
“But we’re getting the ball into the right areas for them now and we’re looking more potent.
“There’s a good fluency about our passing and movement again. There’s a lot to be encouraged about but there’s still work to do.”
If Lennon stopped short about being bullish of his side’s chances of winning the derby, there was no sign of the downbeat boss forced to try and analyse the defeats of November.
“I wouldn’t make predictions about the game at Ibrox, it’s too early for that,” said the Irishman.
“But are they capable of going there and winning? Yeah, they’ve proved in the past they can do it.
“We’ve got Dundee United first on Wednesday so it’s one step at a time. But we’re moving forward in the right direction.
“I want us to play more like that and keep creating chances. There was more flamboyance about us today.
“All we can do is keep putting pressure on. We have to get our own house in order before thinking about other teams. “We’re starting to do that. “I’m not saying we’ve turned a corner and there’s a long way to go.
“We’ve got to do the right things a lot more of the time – but we’re starting to do it better.
“That comes from application, attitude and confidence. There’s a lot more zest and fluency to the way we’re playing now.
“I’m delighted with that today because it could have been a very difficult game.
“We made it look easy which it wasn’t.”
It was a view shared by Leigh Griffiths, whose partnership with Odsonne Edouard was one of the keys to Celtic’s success.
“Odsonne had quite a second half. He’s not been playing his football of late, but you saw how good he was today,” he said.
“His link-up play, his hold up play, his running off the ball was brilliant.
“Hopefully that’s him turned the corner and we can get him all firing again.
“Let’s hope we can put a run together, but we just need to take it game by game. We’ve played well together the last two games and hopefully we’ll get the chance again on Wednesday to prove we deserve to be up there.
“I like to go in behind and he likes to come short to feet. It stretches defenders when they don’t know whether to stay with him or drop off, where he’ll get at people and get turned.
“I like to play on the shoulder and follow stuff in, so we complement each other well.”
“With runners like Ryan Christie, David Turnbull and Callum Mcgregor behind us, we’re an attacking side and we want to go and exploit that.”