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Belters instead of pelters as Jota, Maeda and Co put on slick attacking show to ease 'fans' striker worries

- FRASER WILSON

HOW do you cool the heat rising over the lack of a new centre-forward?

Put Jota on the wing. And Daizen Maeda on the other.

The Celtic board might well have arrived last night under the pump and expecting pelters from punters over a failure to replace Kyogo Furuhashi.

But Brendan Rodgers did them a favour by handing the returning prince of paradise his full homecoming.

And Jota brought his full bag of tricks to the party to help hand dismal Dundee a second successive 6-0 thumping thanks in no small part to another double from the ever-dependable goal machine that is Maeda.

The Portuguese stole the show but he was far from alone as Arne Engels struck an early penalty. Adam Idah chipped in with his fourth goal in three games while Maeda struck a second-half double.

Engels, with his second goal, and sub Nicolas Kuhn crowned a perfect night with two stunning strikes as Celtic stormed 13 points clear again.

Maeda sits on 18 goals and Kuhn 17 from the wing while Celtic have now struck 21 in their last six Premiership outings since losing to Rangers.

What's not to like for supporters ahead of next week's visit of Bayern Munich? Especially with Jota arriving on this form.

He'd turned on the waterworks after his goalscoring cameo against Motherwell. But there were no tears this time. Just gallons of cheers and a shedload of fears for Dundee.

Twelve days after Storm Eowyn had blown this encounter off course the Jota hit Dundee like a tornado in a 60-minute showreel of tricks..

Stepovers, drag backs, one outrageous backheel that appeared to bamboozle Reo Hatate never mind the Dundee defence and two assists... this was the full works.