Lennon stoked with Anthony's performance

And the Hoops boss believes the striker rose to the challenge with a starring role in Sunday's Scottish Communities League Cup last-four win over Falkirk.

Stokes was on target twice in the 3-1 victory as Celtic secured a meeting with Kilmarnock in the final, but Lennon was impressed by more than just the goals.

He said: "I had a chat with him on Friday and told him I was pleased with his goal return but his play in general needs to smarten up a bit and I got all of that from him.

"He always gives himself a chance in games, he has that natural instinct for scoring.

"But to play here consistently you need more than chipping in with a goal here and there.

"I want him to be a good team player and I thought he was excellent. I was delighted with his contribution."

Stokes was also pleased with his own contribution, as his brace put the tie beyond Falkirk after Jay Fulton had cancelled out Scott Brown's penalty.

He said: "I was delighted with the result and happy with the goals as well. It was a good team performance.

"We didn't take our chances in the first half but we made up for it in the second half."

The Irishman was keen to credit its Irn-Bru First Division opponent for making Celtic work hard for its win.

He added: "We did our homework and the gaffer showed us DVDs.

"We know what they are like, they try to play football and they did that today. Thankfully we came out on top.

"It was always going to be difficult. We knew they were going to throw everything at us in the last five or 10 minutes but the third goal just killed it so it was nice to have that bit of a cushion."

Celtic may now be within touching distance of the first silverware of the season, but Stokes refused to discuss the possibility of a domestic clean-sweep.

He said: "I'm not going to talk about the treble.

"We are going to put the final on the back-burner now and just concentrate on the games that we have coming up."