What it feels like to be on the receiving end of 'brilliant' Celtic

There could only be admiration for the candour from Motherwell keeper Liam Kelly in digesting his team’s 4-0 doing dished out by a relentless Celtic.

In a notable contrast with the pattern across the 3-0 dismantling of Rangers by Ange Postecoglou’s men the previous midweek, on Sunday at Fir Park the cinch Premiership leaders retained their intensity post interval following a three-goal first half flurry. They did so through swapping in Jota, James Forrest, Matt O’Riley, Josip Juranovic and Nir Bitton for Liel Abada, Giorgos Giakoumakis, Reo Hatate, Greg Taylor and Callum. Kelly, with tongue in cheek, confessed it didn’t exactly thrill to witness Celtic ablity to turn to such reinforcements.

“It’s not ideal when the players they have on the bench come on. You feel like going off yourself,” he said with a rueful smile. They are a brilliant team with a lot of quality. You see the subs they bring on and they’ve still got some top players [in Kyogo Furuhashi and David Turnbull] who are still injured and weren’t involved today. It was a good day for them and a poor day for us.”

Celtic put fourth-placed Motherwell through an excruciating examination that Kelly was generally able to rationalise, the focus now on looking ahead to his side’s trip to Dundee United on Wednesday. That said, the 26-year-old appeared extremely harsh on himself over the first of Tom Rogic’s two first-half goals in the encounter. A strike that came from the Australian curling into the right hand corner of the keeper’s net with a majestic contact from the edge of the area.

‘We were up against a really good side who were probably a bit much for us,” he said. “In the first half we tried to give it a go and they picked us apart. There were a couple of goals