NEIL LENNON felt that Motherwell’s Devante Cole could have been sent off for a late challenge on Jeremie Frimpong in Celtic’s win at Fir Park, with fears that his right-back may be out for an extended period as a result of the incident.

Cole was booked by referee Andrew Dallas after catching Frimpong with a late tackle, and Lennon fears that the youngster may have picked up ligament damage.

“I didn’t get a good view of it because Jerry’s back was to me but I saw the replay and he’s high and late,” Lennon said. “He’s in a lot of discomfort at the minute.

“It could be ligament damage, we don’t know yet. We will have to assess him over the next couple of days.”

Lennon left Shane Duffy out of the Celtic line-up for the match, with Kristoffer Ajer replacing him before a recurrence of his groin problem forced a switch late on. But Lennon said that the decision wasn’t about removing Duffy from the firing line after a poor run of form.

“Duffy needed a rest,” he said. “He has played a lot of games. Unfortunately we lost Kris again with the groin problem and Shane came on and did a fine job for us. It was a just a little bit of rotation.”

Lennon was delighted to get back on track after a difficult week, and felt his team were much more like themselves as they relieved some of the pressure that had been building on the manager.

“You always need a result at a club like this and I got the result and performance I was looking for,” he said.

“Look, we let ourselves down on Thursday. No question about that. So they have shown today what they are capable of doing and we just need that consistency in individual and team performance.

“It was so much better today. You can talk about levels. We have a bit of work to do in Europe and it may be too far for us now. We’ll not give up trying but we have to be more consistent now.

“That’s a good barometer for us.”