Manager thrilled by ‘gigantic’ Samaras display as club prepare Majstorovic appeal

Published on Monday 13 February 2012 01:52

NEIL Lennon admitted Celtic were more industrious than inspiring in the 1-0 home win over Inverness which restored their four-point lead over Rangers at the top of the SPL on Saturday.

“Things are going very well,” said the Celtic manager. “But there is a long way to go. I was wary of the Inverness game, off the back of Wednesday night.

“The lads hadn’t had much time to recover and go again but their attitude and quality at times was fantastic.

“It wasn’t a vintage performance from this team, but it was pretty solid against a very tough Inverness team who had a week’s rest and who freshened things up a little bit.

“We toyed with the idea of freshening things up ourselves, but we decided just to stick with the majority of players who played so well [in the 4-0 win at Hearts] on Wednesday night.” The Celtic manager, set to appeal Daniel Majstorovic’s straight red card for a professional foul, reserved special praise for Georgios Samaras who was moved to the lone striker’s role when Celtic were reduced to 10 men.

“I am delighted with him,” said the former Celtic skipper. “I thought he was gigantic, especially when we were down to 10 men. He took the responsibility of leading the line, ran the ball for us when we needed him to and challenged for every header.

“He was backed up by Ledley, Scott Brown, James Forrest, and Charlie Mulgrew, who had a great game again, and my back four was excellent in the second half.

“My goalkeeper didn’t have a save to make although there were a few dangerous crosses we had to deal with. In the main, we were in the ascendancy until the sending-off and that gave Inverness a psychological lift, but the way the players conducted themselves was very pleasing.”

Inverness manager Terry Butcher took little comfort from the improvement in his side’s performance from last weekend’s 2-0 William Hill Scottish Cup defeat at home to Celtic.

He said: “We were better in the first 10 minutes than we were in the whole of last week’s game and that gave us a good platform to go on.

“But we didn’t do enough with the extra man to get the equaliser and put Celtic under real pressure. It’s all well and good saying you only lost 1-0 to Celtic but you still lose the game so I’m disappointed.”