Brendan Rodgers praises his Celtic players after record start

Celtic's 1-0 home win over Hamilton set a record for Brendan Rodgers but the Hoops boss quickly passed the praise on to his players.

Leigh Griffiths' strike after 36 minutes gave the Premiership leaders a deserved victory and confirmed the best domestic start by a new Parkhead manager, who is unbeaten in 19 games in Scotland.

The champions moved 11 points clear of Rangers with two games in hand but Rodgers, who has already won the Betfred Cup in his first season in charge, was keen to play down his part.

He said: "It is very nice, it is a great mark of the players' concentration, how relentless they have been to keep going. The point I make to them is very simple.

"When you are winning, the attitude is very simple, work like you are losing and keep working and be relentless and if you are going to succeed you have to have drive and desire.

"You need many qualities to keep winning but two of the biggest one is that drive determination and hunger and we show that in bucket loads."

Griffiths praised strike partner Moussa Dembele for unselfishly setting him up for his 11th goal of the season and revealed he had a premonition of his goal.

Rodgers usually prefers one or the other as the lone striker but paired them both and after the Hoops huffed and puffed for the first 36 minutes the France Under-21 raced through on goal before squaring to the Scotland striker to knock into the net.

Griffiths said: "We were trying to link up as much as we could and I can't thank the big man enough for his very unselfish act running through on goal.

"I was speaking to Broony (captain Scott Brown) at the hotel and said I thought one of us was going to run through and the square it for the other and thankfully the big man has put it on a plate for me and I have tucked it away.

"It is always nice to get three points and a clean sheet and we keep getting results and that is the most important thing at this time of the season."

Accies boss Martin Canning took some positives from the game.

He said: "I thought the boys were excellent, thought the work-rate was different class, they did what we asked them to do and the shape was good.

"You have to concentrate for 90 minutes which I thought we did and we hoped we could stay in the game long enough to make the last 10 minutes uncomfortable for Celtic.

"I thought towards the end we put them under a bit of pressure and had a couple of half opportunities that we could have nicked something."