🚨 Celtic blow Killie away early to move closer to title | OneFootball

Celtic turned on the style at Rugby Park as they took another step towards retaining their Scottish Premiership crown with a 4-1 win in Ayrshire.

Scorers: Donnelly 45′; Kyogo 7′, Maeda 12′, O’Riley 18′, 27′

The visitors were without Jota and Cameron Carter-Vickers due to apparent concerns over the astro surface, as Sead Hakšabanović came in for a first league start since November.

But they didn’t show signs of missing them too much as Kyogo got them off to the perfect start after just seven minutes as he latched onto a disastrous Fraser Murray pass, alert as ever, raced clear and spun inside before finishing coolly with his left foot.

Five minutes later, his fellow Japanese star doubled the lead as Daizen Maeda made it two with a rare header, steering back across goal from Alistair Johnston’s delivery to take Celtic’s league goals tally for the season to 100.

On 18 minutes, they kept adding to that count when Matt O’Riley slotted into the corner after a delightful passage of play involving Yuki Kobayashi, Tomoki Iwata and Greg Taylor and should have had a fourth midway through the half, only for Kyogo to spin a penalty off the post after Taylor was upended.

O’Riley then headed off the line in a rare Kilmarnock opportunity and was then at it again at the other end when he pounced on a slack clearance and curled emphatically into the corner.

But Kilmarnock did pull one back on the stroke of half-time after a big mistake from Callum McGregor inside his own area gifted Liam Donnelly possession and at the third time of asking, he managed to squeeze his effort home.

No further goals followed after the interval, with Kilmarnock coming closest, only to be denied by a fantastic instinct save from Joe Hart from close range, while 18-year-old Ben Summers was handed a Celtic debut in the closing stages.

The win sees the Hoops re-establish their 12 point lead at the top of the table with just six games left to play.