NEIL LENNON hailed magic man Tom Rogic after the Australian claimed two assists in Celtic’s Scottish Cup semi-final win over Aberdeen at Hampden.

Rogic, known to Celtic supporters as the Wizard of Oz, put on a dazzling first-half display as he teed up Ryan Christie and Moi Elyounoussi to fire Celtic into the final on December 20th against Hearts.

Lennon says that Rogic has given his side a fresh dimension to their attacking play, and he is hoping now that his injury problems are behind him to allow him to make a consistent contribution to Celtic’s cause.

“He is a class player and we have to manage him with his knee and ankle,” Lennon said.

“But he has always played well against Aberdeen and his vision and quality on the ball and football intelligence just gives you a different dimension to the way you want to play.

“He is just a class football player and we just want to keep him motivated and injury free if we can because he is such a massive player for us.

“The quality of the two goals was top class. The first was magnificent after we’d been unlucky not to score earlier through Odsonne Edouard.

“But Ryan then came up with an absolute pearler. That set us up and I thought we were vibrant after that.

“We played a lot of good football and the second goal came from a beautiful set-up from Tom. Moi is in fantastic form at the minute and he was in the right place to finish it off.

“That gave us a cushion in the game and after that we were very comfortable.”

Lennon was also happy with the performance of his defenders at the other end after they claimed their first clean sheet since the win over St Johnstone.

“Physically we looked strong,” he said.

“We dealt with crosses and set plays a lot lot better, that was something we touched on the last couple of days.

“I thought Scott (Bain) looked very assured with the ball at his feet or hands and we dealt with anything Aberdeen threw at us very competently.

“It was a really good performance, a really good result and we move on now.”