Neil Lennon shares what he told Celtic players at half time today

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Celtic hammered Ross County 6-0 at Parkhead this afternoon.

Celtic boss Neil Lennon has told The Scottish Sun that he challenged his players to be ruthless against Ross County today – and feels they ‘answered in spades’.

The Bhoys lost last time out, slipping to a 2-0 defeat away at Livingston before the international break, and really needed to respond having let Rangers take top spot.

Celtic often hit back after a defeat, and that’s exactly what they did against Ross County today, with Mohamed Elyounoussi opening the scoring inside the first five minutes, and they really kicked on after the break.

Odsonne Edouard added a second just a minute after the restart, with Callum McGregor, a Liam Fontaine own goal and James Forrest putting the Bhoys 5-0 up.

Elyounoussi added the sixth inside the final 20 minutes, giving Celtic a thumping win whilst reclaiming top spot ahead of Rangers’ game against Hearts tomorrow.

That’s exactly what Lennon would have wanted from today’s game, and he reflected on the second half performance from his players.

Lennon admitted that he told his players to really take Ross County out of the game, urging them to be ruthless rather than showing their visitors a way back into the game, and believes his players responded ‘in spades’.

Lennon added that he doesn’t know how a man of the match was picked, because there were so many great performances in his team, and feels that it could have been more than 6-0.

“We threw down the challenge at half-time – we can be a nice team and play good football and give the other team oxygen to stay in the game or be ruthless,” said Lennon. “They answered in spades. We have a good team and there’s more to come from them. That was a marvellous all-round team performance.”

“I don’t know how they picked man of match because there were so many outstanding performances. We’ve had a little bit of a dip with the last two games but it was an emphatic performance. It could have been more than six and that’s not being disrespectful to Ross County,” he added.