Matt O'Riley has hailed the midfield tweak that worked wonders for Celtic as they blew Kilmarnock away inside 30 minutes at Rugby Park.
Ange Postecoglou made the decision pre-match to leave out key duo Cameron Carter-Vickers and Jota with the likes of Reo Hatate and Liel Abada already missing. The Hoops' strength and depth was evident with Tomoki Iwata, Yuki Kobayashi and Sead Haksabanovic coming in from the win over Rangers in the Old Firm derby in the match previous.
Kyogo Furuhashi fired the opener early on to set the tone after capitalising on an error from the home side. He then did the hard work on his own before slotting a low effort into the net. Moments later Daizen Maeda made it two with a header before O'Riley hit a double to put Celtic four ahead inside 27 minutes. It could have been even more but Kyogo - going for his 30th goal of the season - watched his penalty strike the post and bounce away to safety.
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O'Riley stood-out once again after a solid shift against Rangers and admits the big win at Rugby Park was 'enjoyable'. The relentless Hoops have now broke the 100 goal barrier in the league and are on course to smash the same total for points. The midfielder says there are NO targets set in terms of totals in both categories but has warned rivals they will continue to raise the bar higher and higher.
He said: “We all want more. We want to continue to raise the bar that we set ourselves.
“There’s no set target in terms of the amount of goals or points we should be getting, but if we continue the way we are, we should be in a nice place at the end of the season.
“Especially since the World Cup break, the consistency of performance has been very, very high. I wouldn’t say we are peaking. I think we’ve been at a good level for a long time, to be perfectly honest.
“It’s now the business end of the season where we need to maintain that level and increase it, and I think we are doing that.”
He continued: “It was fun. We changed the shape slightly in midfield which I think worked really well, especially in terms of the way they set up.
“It was enjoyable. It’s always nice when you score goals, obviously. But to be honest it was just nice to be playing the football we did, especially in that first half.”
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