The Hoops had surrendered a four-point advantage to the Ibrox club in recent weeks but a 2-1 win over Hamilton at New Douglas Park on Sunday took them one point clear.

Shaun Maloney and Scott McDonald put the visitors into a comfortable half-time lead and the Parkhead side were cruising through the second half until Mickael Antoine-Curier revived the hosts with a goal seven minutes from the end.

Then, in a frantic finale, Celtic keeper goalkeeper Lukasz Zaluska - deputising for injured Arthur Boruc - made a fine save from James McArthur two minutes from time to prevent the home side stealing a point.

The Celtic skipper, who revealed the Parkhead players and management had a clear-the-air meeting on Saturday following recent public criticism of the squad from boss Tony Mowbray, warned against reading too much into the league table at this stage of the season.

"We went to Hamilton to try and win the game which we did do which is great," McManus said.

"We look to improve but overall we deserved the victory.

"It is early days and as the manager said you can't win anything at this stage.

"It would be great to stay at the top of the league for the rest of the season but we know it's going to be tough and Rangers will be thinking the exact same as us.

"There is a long way to go. We know we need to improve and we will be working hard to do that."

Hamilton boss Billy Reid watched midfielder Marco Paixao lose possession to Andreas Hinkel which led to Celtic's first goal after 15 minutes and then saw McArthur pass up on the chance in the 88th minute to give Accies an unlikely point.

However, Reid was not too downhearted, saying: "In the last couple of weeks we have been within 30 seconds of getting all three points at Tannadice and we came very close to getting a point from Celtic.

"So we are heading in the right direction.

"But I said to the players that we don't want any hard luck stories.

"As long as we learn from the mistakes we made and the mistake was the first goal and that killed the game.

"I thought we started the game well and we were slightly the better side in the first 15 minutes.

"But we gave the ball away cheaply and they got the first goal and then the second goal which they deserved.

"I said to the players at half-time that 2-0 is an interesting score in football, you feel that you have won the game but if the other team score it is really edgy.

"But it was probably just too late to put more pressure on them although James had a one-on-one at the end."