Lennon grounded despite flying high in SPL

Celtic manager Neil Lennon is refusing to believe his side are in the driver’s seat despite going top of the Scottish Premier League.

The Hoops defeated their Old Firm rivals Rangers 1-0 on Wednesday to leapfrog them into first place.

Joe Ledley, who was deployed in the left-back position for Celtic, scored the second-half winner to secure a remarkable comeback for the Parkhead side, who had been 15 points behind their Glasgow rivals.

“At the minute we’re in a good place, but this changes nothing, what it does is to give us a lift going into the New Year,” Lennon told Sky Sports.

Lennon spoke of the growing confidence in the side that has allowed them to overcome the deficit.

“The spirit is there and confidence comes from the victories, I think Motherwell was a big win for us, we scored late on there and the momentum started to gather, people like (Daniel) Majstorovic and (Beram) Kayal and (Gary) Hooper started really playing,” he said.

On the performance, Lennon said: “I don’t think it was a good performance, but it was a controlled team performance, we sacrificed a little bit, leaving Ki (Sung Yeung) out because these games are physical and with Kayal and (Victor) Wanyama we needed to have a platform in the game and we always thought we would be dangerous with (James) Forrest, Hooper and (Georgios) Samaras.”

And after going down to defeat during the last Old Firm fixture at Ibrox, Lennon was keen to avoid a similar performance.

“I felt the difference between the two teams at Ibrox was that Rangers wanted to win it in the second half,” he said.

“I didn’t want that to happen again and to be fair to the players, they’ve galvanised themselves over the last couple of months.”