LAST UPDATE | 2 Jan
CELTIC’S LEAD AT the top of the Scottish Premiership remains eight points heading into the winter break after scoring twice inside six minutes to beat 10-man St. Mirren 3-0.
Rangers had earlier briefly cut the gap to five points with a 3-1 victory over Kilmarnock at Ibrox.
Philippe Clement’s side have two games in hand to try and chip into Celtic’s lead after a three-week shutdown.
However, the defending champions have hit their stride again in recent weeks after back-to-back defeats to Kilmarnock and Hearts last month threw the title race wide open.
Celtic were buoyed by their Old Firm victory on Saturday that inflicted Clement’s first defeat since taking charge of Rangers in October.
Brendan Rodgers’ men flew out the traps in Paisley as Daizen Maeda and Matt O’Riley slotted home from close range in an explosive start.
Any faint hope of a Buddies fightback was extinguished before half-time when Toyosi Olusanya was shown a straight red card for a studs up challenge on Celtic goalkeeper Joe Hart.
Greg Taylor added a third goal from Paulo Bernardo’s pass on the hour mark and only wasteful finishing and the woodwork prevented Celtic from racking up a much more convincing margin of victory.
Rodgers said: “It can always be a tricky game mentally and physically after a Rangers game but I thought we dealt with it really well and we made the start we wanted to. It was good tempo, good speed, so that set us up well in the game.
“These games are so important and I think as we work together more the players understand more the mentality that is required and the demands and you can now see the standard of performance we have put in place. And then the results will come.
“The second half the only downside was we never took the chances we created but we were much better 11 v 10 than we were at the weekend.
“We spoke about that after Rangers. You have to really dominate possession and counter press and we did that really well in the second half.”
Rangers bounced back against in-form Kilmarnock as Abdallah Sima showed why he will be missed as he departs to represent Senegal at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Two goals in the five minutes before half-time swung the game in Rangers favour as Ross McCausland opened the scoring before Sima’s finely struck volley registered his 15th goal of the season.
Danny Armstrong converted the first penalty Rangers have conceded in 75 league games to briefly bring Kilmarnock back into the match.
But Todd Cantwell quickly restored the home side’s two-goal cushion.
Rangers could then afford to give loan signing Fabio Silva his debut.
And Clement promised there would be more new arrivals this month.
“We’re going to do some more business,” said the Belgian. “Everybody in the club is aligned around that and we have now one month to do the good business.”
Elsewhere, Barry Robson believes that Aberdeen looked like a “proper team” again in their 3-0 win over Ross County.
Republic of Ireland international Jamie McGrath’s first-half double was added to by Bojan Miovski late in the day, with the Dons in control for the vast majority of the match in Dingwall.
Robson’s side moved up to eighth in the table, four points above second-bottom County.
He said: “The boys played well, and from start to finish we looked really at it.
“We looked like a proper team, and I was really pleased for the players because it has been a long first half of the season being on our travels.
“It has worked for us at times when we’ve changed shape during games. I don’t know if people have seen, but we’ve tried to do that within games, so we started with it and it seemed to work.
“We thought that system might work against Ross County today, and it did. When we’ve been at our best, no matter what system we’ve played, it has been when we’ve pressed well and moved the ball quickly, and I think that’s what we did today.”
- Additional reporting from PA
