NEIL LENNON has lavished praise on Charlie Mulgrew, while bemoaning the latest rash of injury problems to beset his side.

The Celtic manager’s hopes of establishing a settled back four were disrupted yet again when Glenn Loovens was forced off yesterday with what appears to be a recurrence of a hamstring problem, while recent signing Mohamed Bangura will today go for an MRI scan after reporting to training with a swollen knee.

Celtic are already without Scott Brown, Emilio Izaguirre and Kelvin Wilson due to injury, and appear increasingly reliant at the back upon captain Mulgrew, who scored his second crucial goal in eight days to give Celtic a 2-1 victory over Aberdeen.

“Charlie has had a good week,” said Lennon. “He scored last weekend, set the goal up in midweek, and scored again today. He has been really consistent and I think that is his first time captaining a winning team, so I am pleased for him. He has played brilliantly for the majority of the season and his improvement since he came back here has been huge. It is a credit to him, he went away to have a career down south, came back up again and never gave up on it. Now he is captain of Celtic and that is a great achievement.

“We lost Glenn to a hamstring injury so we will have to wait and see the extent of that,” Lennon added. “We also lost Mohamed Bangura. He has got a swollen knee so getting that scanned so we can find out what length of time he is going to be out for. We would like to get a settled back four, but Izaguirre and Kelvin Wilson are out, Cha was out for a length of time and now Glenn. We are up against it a bit with the injury situation but I am very pleased with the players, particularly the ones who played 90 minutes on Thursday.”

Matches are coming thick and fast, but Celtic may be able to welcome back Georgios Samaras and Kris Commons for the visit to Easter Road in the Scottish Communities League Cup the day after tomorrow. “It is a great three points and we look forward to Wednesday now,” Lennon said. “We need to be more clinical in the final third but when it all clicks someone is going to take a real beating.”

Celtic were worth their win against Aberdeen but they were assisted by the fact the visitors ended the game with 10 men, Ryan Jack being sent off late on for two second-half bookings, the first of which came for leaving the field of play to celebrate his fine equaliser. The decisions may have adhered to the letter of the law but Aberdeen manager Craig Brown said he felt the sending-off was harsh.

“To be cautioned for overcelebrating is a bit harsh,” Brown said last night. “A word in his ear might have done it. The fourth official said he warned him not to go off, but Ryan says he didn’t hear him say that. He wasn’t in the crowd or even on the track, he was still on the grass.

“The second one, there were other fouls in the game that were equally bad which didn’t result in a booking. I’m not blaming the ordering-off for losing the game but it gave us a mountain to climb with a man short away from home against a team fighting to stay in SPL contention.”