The front four of Osmand, Benjamin Nygren, Hassan and Duran caused Hearts no end of problems.
A double for the young striker, a double for the Sweden international who’s now on eight for the season from midfield well before Halloween, a goal and two assists from the consistently impressive Colombian, and one of the Egypt winger’s best displays since signing after the World Cup. Is this then the template going forward? Not necessarily, according to their manager.
“No, because we’ve got so many matches coming up in Europe and in the league,” O’Neill explained.
“We’re going Sunday, Thursday, Sunday, Thursday, Sunday, Thursday. So, we will have to mix it up a little bit. It’s also a squad game for us at this stage. Between now and the beginning of January we are at it constantly.”
As if to illustrate his point, Celtic’s next fixture comes under the ‘must-win’ category as Celta Vigo come calling in Thursday’s Europa League fixture, with both sides yet to register a point in the league phase after two defeats each.
“We’ll make a couple of adjustments on Thursday evening,” O’Neill said.
“We still want to try and win and I think other players coming on and getting little bits of games here and there helps immensely. It helps the whole squad and I think it helps the confidence of the team.
“It will be a tough game for us. Celta Vigo are a team in a big league in Spain, they’re very, very decent, but it’s a game we probably have to win.
“We have to win to give ourselves some momentum and do some catching up because we’ve lost two games, so we really need to win this game. We’ll go all out to try and do it.”
