Celtic manager Martin O’Neill was encouraged by the performances of some of his recent arrivals as the champions continued their perfect start to the William Hill Premiership campaign.

Second-half goals from Liam Scales and Yang Hyun-jun earned Celtic a 2-1 victory over St Mirren, who led at half-time through a Nikolas Agrafiotis penalty.

Camilo Duran again impressed with a disallowed goal for a contentious offside decision and the assist for Yang’s winner, while Mika Baur was heavily involved in the midfield action.

Egypt winger Haissem Hassan showed signs of his running power although his end product was mixed, while 18-year-old on-loan Chelsea forward Shim Mheuka also had a goal disallowed by VAR for offside.

O’Neill said: “Hassan, one v ones, he can beat players all day long.

“He’s one that needs to get up to speed. He did fine in the World Cup, really fine in the World Cup. Not that we judged him in that, but he did fine. Then after the World Cup, I think he took about a seven or eight-day holiday and that’s it.

“So he’s been doing a little bit of training on his own, but he’s a handful. He’s definitely a handful. He played a delightful ball just at the start of the second half and Yang should have scored.

“So he needs to get up to speed, he needs to obviously do a bit more work going backwards, but great.”

O’Neill believes Mheuka could be starting games in the not-too-distant future.

“He could be a proper player in time,” he added. “He could be.

“We’ve got a couple of players that deep down you don’t really know exactly what they can do. Of course we’ve studied them, but until they’re thrown into these games…

“I was speaking to wee Mika Baur afterwards, I said, ‘Mika, these games are hard.’ He’s played in the Bundesliga second division, he just got into the big league. The games are hard here.

“Sometimes they don’t realise how hard they are. But big Shim looks as if he wants to adjust to it.”

Like Hassan, St Mirren had a winger who showed his pace can be a real asset after on-loan Arsenal player Ismael Kabia caused problems for Colby Donovan.

Saints manager Craig McLeish said: “He’s a fantastic player and that’s why we were so desperate to bring him to the club. It’s taken him a little bit of time for him to properly back himself.

“We tell him how good he is all the time and tell him to trust himself. He’s not going to get past his full-back all the time, but the times he does, he’s going to create problems.

“We wanted to have those types of players on the team. Luke Thomas comes on and he’s creative. Chris Mochrie has that about him where he can ghost past people in tight areas.

“We want it to be exciting to watch. We want to carry a threat at all times. When you’ve got players like that on your team, you’re going to carry a threat.”