Celtic 3-0 Hibs

Mark Atkinson reports from Celtic’s 3-0 win over Hibs.

Transcript

00:00Full time here at Celtic Park where it's finished Celtic 3 Hibs 0 in the William Hill Premiership.

00:07The scoreline probably doesn't tell the full story. Celtic were actually a level or two beneath their usual standard

00:13yet still ran out countable winners and end the day 9 points clear at the top of the Premiership

00:19due to Aberdeen's one-all draw with St Johnston.

00:23However they gave Hibs plenty of early Christmas presents at Celtic Park

00:28the visitors passing up three really good chances, two from Nikola Kukarevic

00:34that were one-on-one's guiltiest chances that he failed to convert

00:39and the Ukrainian actually came off not long afterwards with an injury.

00:42In total Hibs had 9 shots on target which is pretty rare for a Scottish team here at Celtic Park

00:48and in fact Kasper Schmeichel the home goalkeeper was given the Man of the Match award

00:53which again tells its own story.

00:55Brendan Rodgers the Celtic boss made five alterations to his team

01:00he gave starch to Arne Engels and Luke McEwan and Liam Scales

01:04Cameron Carter-Vickers, Kyobu Furuhashi and Rio Hatate left out of the starting 11.

01:10Engels opened the scoring actually quite early on but the Belgian wasn't at his best

01:14McEwan was fairly quiet, in fact Celtic probably put in one of their poorer performances of the season

01:20yet got one of their more straightforward scorelines on the board.

01:24For Hibs they played well in defeat but it's a bad afternoon for them

01:29they're bottom of the table again after Hearts won 2-0 at Dundee

01:32and their game against Ross County next weekend really does look like a huge encounter for David Gray and his team.

01:38Celtic by contrast have bigger fish to fry, Rodgers made changes to his starting 11

01:43so that he can keep the team fresh for two massive matches next week.

01:47Danny Mozart came away with the Champions League

01:49followed the Premier Sports Cup Final against Rangers a week on Sunday

01:54Rodgers will hope that generosity is in shorter supply than it was here

01:58it didn't matter though in this particular match where it finished Celtic 3 Hibs 0.