Neil Lennon pinpoints Celtic ‘disappointing thing’ as he shrugs off Rangers pressure query

Neil Lennon hailed Celtic new boy Albian Ajeti after the striker bagged a Hoops winner at Tannadice.

The £5million front-man bagged his first goal for the club since arriving from West Ham to seal victory over Dundee United.

With seven minutes left on Tayside, it looked like Lennon’s side would drop more points on the road on their return to Premiership action.

But Ajeti popped up to fire home from close range and secure a vital three points.

Afterwards, Lennon admitted the Swiss ace is still short of fitness – but hopes by getting off the mark it can be the first of many.

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He said: “I’m delighted for Ajeti, it’s always good for a striker to come in and make an early impact.

“You can see he’s not match fit yet but that’ll do his confidence the world of good.

“He did great to keep the ball alive for the goal. We were thinking he was going to flick it into the goalie’s arms and it would die.

“But he kept it alive then flashed a great finish. And I think some of his link up play was good as well.

“He’s a work in progress in terms of his fitness. He’s still another couple of weeks away. He has to get used to the speed of the game and how we play.

“But having that early impact will do him good. He’s had a tough time of it in the last 12 months.

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“I hope it can be the first of many goals for him. I don’t want to make predictions but looking at him, and the type of player he was at Basel, he knows where the goal is.

“He knows how to play centre-forward so we’re hoping we can tap into that here.”

Lennon insists there was no panic from the Celtic bench going into the last 10 minutes at Tannadice with the score at 0-0.

They’ve already dropped points at Kilmarnock and Old Firm rivals Rangers had picked up a win earlier in the day.

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But Lennon said: “We’re just concentrating on what we’re doing.

“We have a volume of games now, with Europe on Wednesday and then Motherwell next week.

“I can’t control what other teams are doing around us.

“It was just important that we took care of the game today and eventually we did.”

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Micky Mellon’s side played well and few would have begrudged them a draw.

But Lennon is adamant that the champions were well worthy of their win.

He said: “We got our just rewards, it was a great performance and great win.

“The only disappointing thing is the scoreline – we should have won the game very comfortably.

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“So you have to credit Dundee United or Benjamin Siegrist in goal who made a couple of great saves.

“We were a little bit loose in the final third but the performance was really good. From 25 minutes on, we were outstanding.

“I don’t think we’re hitting top form just yet. We’re still trying to find that.

“But the attitude today was brilliant and some of the football outstanding. We deserved even better out of the game but we’ll take the win.

“We had 20-plus attempts on goal and double figures in corners. It was a pretty dominant performance.

“If we’d have drawn 0-0, I’d have said: ‘We played well but didn’t score, let’s move on’. But we got what we deserved.

“If we were rubbish, not creating openings, looking leggy or not having desire to go and score a goal – that would concern me.

“But I didn’t see any evidence of that today at all.”