Ange Postecoglou called Daizen Maeda a 'menace' after his outstanding performance against Livingston helped Celtic keep their lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership to nine points.
The Hoops were on the ball from minute one, and despite their early dominance, it took them half an hour to finally breach the Lions' den with Greg Taylor's superb strike opening the scoring. Maeda then doubled the lead after a clearance from Livingston's backline struck him in the face and completely upended goalkeeper Shamal George, before Kyogo Furuhashi's goal in first-half stoppage-time wrapped things up before the game had hit the interval.
Celtic have now won 22 of their 24 league games, and provided they win one of the two upcoming Old Firm derbies in the league from now until the end of the season, would likely only need to win a maximum of nine of their remaining 13 league games to be crowned champions. Postecoglou was happy with the result - though he pinpointed Maeda as the king of the east end on a miserably wet night at Parkhead.
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Speaking about the result on Celtic TV, he said: "It was another strong performance. I thought we started the game really well and controlled it, we got our goals, we controlled again in the second half obviously we didn't get the goals. They still back even at 3-0 so it was hard to get the space we needed, but we still had some chances.
"It was the key for us. We knew the game was going to go we had to maintain our composure, but not let them get comfortable, consistently probe and find ways through. I thought we did that. We constantly asked questions with our possession, and we got our rewards for that."
Maeda was one of the better players on the park tonight, setting the tempo from minute one and being a thorn in the side of the Livingston defence. The former J-League star was unlucky not to register an assist, and perhaps unfortunate for his goal to come about in a comical way that undermined his outing.
Speaking about his performance, the Aussie said: "He [Maeda] is always in the right areas and he was tonight. A couple other times he lacked a little bit of composure in the final third, but he's a menace if you're picking him up, he's always going to be making those runs and in the areas that's why he gets his goals.
Elsewhere, Taylor won the Celtic Man of the Match award for his goal, superb play in possession and of course keeping a clean sheet. Postecoglou lauded his efforts in front of goal, highlighting the importance of goals coming from across the pitch instead of just in the attacking ranks - before praising Kyogo for another 'great' performance.
He added: "He's been fanatic this year and continuing to improve and he gets into these good areas and he can finish which helps us, because in a game like today the opposition will try and navigate our obvious threats and the beauty is that we're sharing the goals around. It's not just our attacking players, everyone is contributing."
"I thought [Kyogo] was great tonight. He made some great runs and again when you have a team who sits so deep you need someone who can break a line. He did it consistently, every time we found him he was a threat, but like I said he took his goals really well to continue his goalscoring form."
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