Glasgow (AFP) – Kyogo Furuhashi and Giorgos Giakoumakis were again on target as Celtic moved two points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership with a 2-0 win over Hearts on Sunday.
The Hoops were far from their best, but did enough to extend their perfect start to the season after four games thanks to their prolific strikers.
Once again Giakoumakis had to make do with a place on the bench, but scored for the second consecutive game as a substitute, while Furuhashi netted for the third straight game.
“Some of our service wasn’t great today in the final third but we know if we get the ball into those areas that both of them are very good finishers,” said Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou.
“They have got a real presence in the box in different ways, different styles.”
Hearts’ focus appeared to be on overturning a 2-1 deficit in Thursday’s Europa League qualifier against Swiss champions FC Zurich as manager Robbie Neilson left a number of key players on the bench.
But they stayed in the game until late red cards for Alex Cochrane and Tony Sibbick.
“It was okay, but it wasn’t probably as free-flowing as I’d like a game of football to be,” added Postecoglou.
“It felt like it was stop-start a lot and not a lot of consistent tempo in the game. Some of it was our doing but just one of those games where it just didn’t feel like we could open up and play our football.”
Celtic looked set for a comfortable afternoon when Furuhashi turned in Daizen Maeda’s cross on 13 minutes.
However, the champions found more goalscoring chances hard to come by and Josh Ginnelly should have levelled for the visitors when he dragged wide with just Joe Hart to beat.
Hearts’ resistence was broken when Cochrane and Sibbick saw second bookings in the final few minutes for bringing down Liel Abada.
Celtic made their numerical advantage count with the last kick off the game as Giakoumakis stretched to turn home Josip Juranovic’s low cross.
Victory takes Celtic back above Rangers, who dropped their first points of the season in an eventful 2-2 draw at Hibs on Saturday.
