It was in the last four minutes of Sunday’s game against Dundee United that Giorgios Giakoumakis completed a number of things that will long be talked about in Celtic folk lore: he bagged his first hat-trick in a game that looked set to finish in a 2-2 draw; he scored the winner in the dying minutes; he scored all the goals for his team and in the process provided a three-point cushion against eternal rivals Rangers at the top of the Scottish Premiership table.

He also doubled his goal tally since start of year (he scored his only other goal for Celtic in October) and was selected man of the match.

Celtic FC manager Ange Postecoglou sang the praises of the player whom he brought over from the Netherlands Eeredivisie team VVV-Venlo (he scored 29 goals for the Dutch team in the 2020-21season).

READ MORE: Giakoumakis scores first goal in front of Celtic fans to ease heat on Postecoglou

“He’s a good finisher, he’s a presence in the box and the way we play suits his style of football,” Postecoglou told CelticFC.com.

“He’s been working awfully hard and he’s been unlucky in front of goal. Like all strikers, he gets his rewards today because he’s consistently doing those things.

“It was important because they sat deep with a lot of bodies in the box so we needed a presence and he gave us that.”

The victory was particularly important for a Celtic team coming from Thursday’s humiliating 3-1 home loss to Bodo/Glimt of Norway in the UEFA Conference League.

The game against Dundee was not an easy one, all that was missing from their play was a bus conductor.

Celtic lionised possession (82 percent) completed 794 passes to Dundee’s 190 had 19 shots on goal of which six were on target compared to Dundee’s four shots of which two found their mark from set pieces.

READ MORE: Postecoglou’s Celtic topple Rangers from their perch in Old Firm classic

“It’s not the way you want to win games all the time but we’ve been on a great run in the league for a while and you can’t do that unless you are showing resilience at different times,” Postecoglou said.

“It would have been easy to get flat with the crowd getting nervous and we just had to keep our heads and we did that and got our goal.

“We made things more difficult with two set-pieces against which kept them in the game.

“However, after Thursday night, the most important thing was to get the result and it was a good result and performance and we should have won more comfortably.”

Giakoumakis expressed pleasure with his performance but also praised his team’s resilience.

“It was great, to be honest. I was looking forward to scoring for this club and this team, it was something that I was really missing,” Giakoumakis said after the match.

“The most important thing is that we won and we increased our lead in the league.

“We showed a lot of character and proved we’re a big team and we have some personality.

“We conceded twice from set-pieces and that’s something we have to improve but we won and that’s all that matters.”