First-half blitz seals victory

Hearts... 1 Celtic..

Hearts ... 1 Celtic ... 4 Martin O'Neill has been assuring anyone willing to listen that his on-going contract talks will have no detrimental effect on Celtic's performances and on this evidence he is absolutely right.

The Parkhead team sailed through a traditionally difficult fixture with the minimum of fuss. It was effectively all over when Chris Sutton opened the scoring after only three minutes and any lingering doubts were dismissed when Stilian Petrov added a second six minutes later.

When Celtic go ahead in games as early as that it becomes a damage limitation exercise for the opposition. Two further first-half efforts from Henrik Larsson rendered the rest of the afternoon redundant although Hearts at least had the consolation of not conceding any more and even scored through the substitute Gary Wales.

O'Neill was unconcerned about that late lapse and said: "You need a good start here and we had that. If you had said beforehand we would win I would have been pleased, if you had said we would have won with a performance like that I would have been thrilled.

READ MORE

"I don't think my contract situation is affecting things in the slightest."

Sutton confirmed: "We are paid to go out and do our best and it will be up to the manager whether he signs or not." Hearts' manager Craig Levein would probably prefer to see O'Neill to move on.

The second half, with Celtic relaxed and happy apart from a booking for Agathe, was a non-event but for the late header from Wales who had substituted Andy Kirk after 77 minutes.

HEARTS: McKenzie, Maybury, Pressley, McKenna, Severin, Stamp (Webster 45), McGeown (Simmons 45), McMullan, Valois, Kirk (Wales 77), de Vries. Subs Not Used: Gordon, Twaddle. Booked: Severin. Goals: Wales 89.

CELTIC: Douglas, Valgaeren (Crainey 75), Balde, Laursen, Agathe, Lambert, Lennon, Petrov (Thompson 68), Guppy (Hartson 75), Sutton, Larsson. Subs Not Used: Gould, Miller. Booked: Agathe. Goals: Sutton 3, Petrov 9, Larsson 37, 42.

Referee: K Clark (Scotland).