Hoops midfielder, Matt O’Riley had no sooner picked up the cinch Premiership Goal of the Month award for April than he turned his thoughts towards his goal personally and collectively for the remaining May matches, and that is helping to get Celtic over the line in the 2021/22 cinch title challenge.

It’s all now down to what happens with the three games over the next week or so with the Celts holding a six-point advantage and in the driving seat.

Much of the work has already been done because, as they say, the championship is a marathon, not a sprint and, likewise, his strike against St Johnstone that netted the Goal of the Month award had a bit of a marathon flavour about it as well.

It was one of those classic multi-touch goals with a myriad of passes and virtually every outfield Celt touching the ball, and while many Player of the Year recipients cite that it’s a team award, this is a rare occasion when a goal award could be described as a team goal.

O’Riley said: “I think I only touched the ball a couple of times in the build-up to that goal, so I have to say thank you to most of the team for that one because there were a lot of passes before the final shot, but it’s pretty cool to win it, so I’m happy about that.”

The focus now turns to this month and the visit of Hearts tomorrow (Saturday) with the Celts knowing that three points would almost unassailably tighten their grip on a trophy most pundits feel they already have one hand on.

The midfielder said: “We approach it like any other game, I know that sounds pretty clichéd, but that’s all we can really control at the end of the day.

“So that’s what we’ve been doing for most of the season and we’ll stay doing that for the last remaining games.

“We don’t feel as though we’ve cracked it yet, we don’t feel as though we’re a great team, we still think there’s a lot more we need to do to be at that next level.

'We’re just going to try to keep improving game-by-game.'

“Hearts is not an easy game, so we’re going to approach it with the utmost respect to them and hopefully we can just take care of business."

He added: “We expect a tough game, it always is a tough game. I remember my debut at their place so I know what it’s like personally already, which is a good experience to have.

“We all know that they’re a strong team, they wouldn’t be in third place and they wouldn’t be in a cup final if they weren’t a good team, so we’re going to have to be more than ready for it.”

O’Riley’s goal of last month and a goal for this month