Neil Lennon has revealed that the tactics and formations of Antonio Conte convinced him to play with a twin strike force.
Following the winter break Leigh Griffiths returned to the side to partner Odsonne Edouard in attack with the benefits obvious in Celtic’s results.
Despite apparently having the tougher run of fixtures Celtic have added 11 points to their advantage at the top of the table and are now have a plus 25 goal difference advantage over their Ibrox rivals.
Since the hey-day of Gary Hooper and Tony Stokes Celtic haven’t had a real partnership in attack but thanks to some careful planning Lennon seems to have doubled his goal threat.
He told the Daily Record:
I like the formation. I used to watch Antonio Conte’s teams a lot and they always used it. We played against his Juventus side in the Champions League when they beat us.
Bayer Leverkusen also played a back three at Ibrox a few weeks ago, which was interesting – it’s not all 4-3-3 nowadays.
I think Brendan Rodgers had it in mind to play Odsonne with Moussa Dembele up top and he did it a couple of ?times before Dembele left. The lads had tried it a few times under Brendan so that entered into my thinking.
The calendar year 2019 was virtually a right-off for Griffiths although he did put together a flurry of goals at the start of the season, scoring against Nomme Kalju, St Johnstone and Motherwell.
In his last outing, against St Mirren he scored a hat-trick to take his total for the season to 11.
Since setting Juventus on course for their current success Conte has had spells with the Italian national side and Chelsea and is now in charge of Inter Milan.