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Ten-man Celtic maintain 14-point lead

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Ten-man Celtic gave their fans some Christmas cheer as they maintained their 14-point lead atop the Scottish Premiership with a 3-0 win over Hamilton on Saturday.


Leigh Griffiths scored on the stroke of half-time before Callum McGregor saw red a minute after the interval for his second bookable offence.


Despite their numerical disadvantage, Stuart Armstrong added to Celtic’s tally before substitute Moussa Dembele sealed their 13th win in a row.


Fierce rivals Rangers carved out a narrow 1-0 win over Inverness Caledonian Thistle at Ibrox to strengthen their grip on second place.


Mark Warburton’s side moved seven points clear of Aberdeen, who won 3-1 away to Motherwell on Friday.


Brad McKay’s first-half own goal was enough for Rangers to win a fourth successive game for the first time this season.


After grabbing a double in last week’s win at Hamilton, Martyn Waghorn retained his place in the Rangers starting line-up and missed an early chance to give his side the lead. The striker latched onto Joe Garner’s headed flick-on and burst into the box from the right, but blazed his effort high and wide.


Lee Wallace’s deflected cross then fell to Jason Holt, who tested Owain Fon Williams with an acrobatic bicycle kick. Despite their early pressure, Rangers almost went behind in the 12th minute when Losana Doumbouya got in front of the Gers centre-back to prod a lofted ball into the box towards goal.


But Wes Foderingham produced a fine save to stop it on the line.


Inverness were to rue that missed opportunity a minute later as Rangers took the lead. Waghorn beat his man to cut into the box and his fiercely struck cross-cum-shot smacked off McKay and into his own net.


Inverness were unperturbed by going behind and Foderingham came to the rescue for Rangers again as he thwarted Larnell Cole after the Inverness forward intercepted Andy Halliday’s slack pass.


Halliday nearly made amends when his vicious 25-yard strike looked to be sailing into the top corner, only for Fon Williams to get a fingertip to it to turn it over. — AFP


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