Celtic striker Georgios Samaras has a touch of the Marcus North about him. Just when you think he has exhausted every last drop of patience among the fans and team brains trust with a run of poor performances, up he pops with a display of pure brilliance to earn another stay of execution.

Unlike the West Australian batsman, who seems to have frustrated the Australian cricket selectors once too often, the Greece international* is likely to have secured his tenure at Celtic Park until at least the end of the season with a magnificent double to earn the Hoops a 2-0 win at Rangers on Sunday.

Like his team, which has had a stuttering first half of the season, the lank-haired former Manchester City forward went to Ibrox with a big question mark hanging over his future. Many were forecasting manager Neil Lennon would finally end his three-year stay at Celtic by placing him in the January transfer window.

But two second-half goals, pouncing on an error from Gers goalkeeper Allan McGregor to slot home the first and beating him from the spot for the second, rounded off an exceptional match to revive his career in Scotland as well as Celtic's hopes of wresting back the SPL title from its arch-rival.

At his best, Samaras is an athletic big man who can run with the ball at and around defenders and score spectacular goals. At his frustrating worst, he is ponderous and tangle-footed, running too deep and out of position to collect the ball, dwelling on it for far too long before being dispossessed or offloading a tame effort at goal.

He has been used sparingly this season by Lennon. He was substituted on the hour the previous weekend as the Bhoys snatched a 2-0 win at home against St Johnstone before being dumped for the midweek victory over Motherwell. Sunday's goals were his first of the season in the league.

Fortunately for Celtic, it was Good Georgios who turned up at Ibrox for Sunday's Old Firm showdown. The unexpected but thoroughly deserved win took Celtic four points clear at the top of the table, though Walter Smith's team has two games in hand thanks to a spate of postponements during the recent big freeze in Britain.

Celtic will no doubt enter 2011 with a spring in its step after a productive festive season. The wins over St Johnstone and Motherwell ended a series of drawn games at Parkhead, while the emergence of the talismanic Paddy McCourt and the arrival of former Arsenal star and Calvin Klein underwear model Freddie Ljungberg will further lift the fans' hopes.

McCourt is from a different era. Wavy-haired and unathletic, he arrived at Celtic at the start of the 2008-09 season from Northern Ireland with a reputation for wasted brilliance, having failed to establish himself in England at the start of the decade despite his acknowledged special ability.  

After long spells in the Celtic reserve team the so-called "Derry Pele" seems finally to be playing to his true potential, his exceptional ball control, dribbling and solo goals establishing him as the fans' favourite. He still looks to struggle physically in the final third of matches, but was man of the match against both St Johnstone and Motherwell, scoring the deciding goal in the latter match and playing the full 90 minutes in both, something of an achievement for him.

* Interestingly, Samaras was eligible to play for the Socceroos. His father, Ioannis, was born in Melbourne, where his grandfather (also Georgios) was one of the founding members of the South Melbourne Hellas soccer club.