Mowbray warns his Celtic stars to improve

Celtic manager Tony Mowbray warned his stars there can be no repeat of his team’s sloppy play in their 2-0 win over St Mirren when they face Rangers in next weekend’s Old Firm derby.

Paddy McCourt’s solo goal and Shaun Maloney’s late strike were enough to brush aside St Mirren on Saturday – leaving Celtic four points clear at the top of the table after Rangers were held to a goalless draw by Aberdeen.

But Mowbray was still unimpressed with his team’s efforts and described the performance as unacceptable.

He wants an improvement in Thursday’s Europa League tie against Rapid Vienna at Parkhead, so Celtic can go into the season’s first clash with Rangers in better form.

“The positives were that we kept a clean sheet and we won 2-0,” Mowbray said. “The negatives were everything else.

“It was a poor performance, poor passing, lacking of a cutting edge and creation, the decision-making was not good enough and neither was the quality.

“It’s the poorest we’ve been all season.

“I am very disappointed as are the players and we have to improve if we are to find the consistency of results.

“Managers get frustrated. The players are a good group to work with but I can’t accept what we saw. The players know that and we have to work hard to be better.”

Rangers boss Walter Smith admitted his team are struggling to deal with being marked men after settling for their third successive goalless draw.

Smith’s men have now gone 293 minutes without scoring a league goal following the 0-0 draw with Aberdeen at Ibrox and he feels opposing teams may be raising their game when they play the Scottish champions.

“It’s a strange situation we find ourselves in because three 0-0 draws in the league have seen us drop back a bit,” Smith said.

“I’m not sure if people are paying us a bit more respect because we’re champions but we need to pinpoint the problem and rectify it.

“We’re a team that has scored a lot of goals over the period of time I’ve been here and we’ve still the same players.

“It’s the same group that won us the championship last season but while we’ve had some good performances, we’re missing a bit of sharpness just now.

“It’s a problem for us and it’s one that we continue to try to adjust. We have ideas but the players have to carry them out.”

Hearts captain Michael Stewart inspired the Tynecastle club to a 2-1 victory over Hamilton.

Stewart broke the deadlock 10 minutes after half-time with a penalty before Suso Santana added a second with an audacious back-heel two minutes later.

Hamilton winger Marco Paixao brought the Accies back into the game with a cool finish in the 62nd minute but the hosts held on.

Merouane Zemmama scored on his first Hibernian start for almost 18 months as Motherwell’s unbeaten league run came to an end with a 3-1 defeat at Fir Park.

Zemmama curled home a free-kick from a difficult angle to put the game beyond Jim Gannon’s side 10 minutes into the second half.

Derek Riordan had put Hibs back in front moments earlier after Mark Reynolds cancelled out Colin Nish’s early opener.

Elsewhere, Dundee United won 3-2 at St Johnstone and Falkirk shared a goalless draw with Kilmarnock.