“We started the game well. Obviously we created a couple of really good chances early on. We got the ball in the box, Ash did well to get the first one on target and unfortunately it hit the bar. Then the second one when it came back in, Bain’s made a good save but maybe he shouldn’t have been given the chance.

“Then Celtic got a bit of fortune with the goal, it’s a heavy deflection otherwise Joe is saving that. I thought we lost a wee bit of confidence from there for about 15 minutes, we never quite got the same press on them as we’d had initially.

“It’s not a simple as just getting man to man, it also has to be about us doing better with the ball. Having been a midfielder myself, it’s hard to get up the top end of the pitch when you see the ball keeps coming back at you and in that spell in the first half, we didn’t look after the ball well enough. We needed to play in their half more, which then gives you a better starting position.

“Saying that, in that period, Welsh and Brown had most of the touches in the Celtic team rather than Edouard, Klimala and Christie, and although they had a lot of the ball, Joe had nothing much to do first half bar pick the ball out of the net from the deflection. The defenders were outstanding again today. That’s real quality they were up against.

“That said, we didn’t have enough possession, we wanted to play more of the game in their half. Towards the end of the first half we were fully man to man, we were totally committed to that, and then after the break, we were the team that was coming forward. Clearly they had a couple of chances on the break but we pretty much pinned them in their own half, as we did ten days ago.

“We just needed somebody to gamble, to get across people so I’m disappointed we’ve got nothing from it. I felt the performance, like the other night here, was deserving of something from the game.

“We’ve had a lot of tight matches here, the last six we’ve lost three of them 1-0, won one, drawn one and lost 2-1. They’re very tight matches and we wanted to be the one that came out on top of that today. We had the chances to do it, but again it hasn’t happened.

“It was hard leaving Callum out after his goal last week, but Fraser Hornby got injured last week because of his lack of condition through not playing games. I’m trying to manage Hendry and Kamberi, trying to get the balance right with them. We are in a situation where we only have two strikers available so we have to be aware of that.

“Added to that, Niall’s delivery is so important to us. He’s not a wing-back any more, he can’t do that shift up and down the pitch, but if we can get him on the pitch and in the right areas, he can do damage and we saw that today.

“We felt set plays would be important today and so it proved. His delivery was on the money time and time again and we should be scoring goals from those opportunities that he puts in the box. He was putting it on a plate in there, but we need to show more determination to put it over the line.

“There are a couple of games to the split, Hamilton and Dundee United and it’s important we produce winning performances so that we can give ourselves a real chance post-split. There’s nobody in our dressing room who thinks that third place is beyond us, I can tell you that.”