Celtic manager Ronny Deila says Celtic need to be more clinical in front of goal after they squandered a number of chances in their narrow 1-0 win away to Motherwell on Saturday.

Celtic dominated the match after Anthony Stokes fired them in front in the fifth minute.

But John Guidetti, James Forrest and Stefan Johansen were all left frustrated by poor finishing and some good goalkeeping from Motherwell's Dan Twardzik.

Despite having a numerical advantage after Simon Ramsden was sent off for a reckless challenge in the 66th minute, the Glasgow giants couldn't add to their lead leaving Motherwell to almost snatch an equaliser late on.

The win, Celtic's seven successive in the league, kept them three points clear of Inverness Caledonian Thistle at the top of the table but Deila urged his side to find their killer touch.

"The positive is that we are creating chances but of course we need to be more effective than we are now," Deila, whose side haven't scored more than two in the Premiership since mid-October, said.

"I think the first 20 minutes was brilliant. They created chances and they pressed well when they didn't have the ball. We got forward well and had good penetration runs and I want to see more of that from the players.

"If they can do that for 90 minutes then we are talking about a team playing at the top level and we're going to be a hard team to beat.

"I was satisfied with that and the fact they created a lot of chances but we should have scored much more goals than we did. When you don't score then they can still get something and it was lucky for us that they didn't score.

"The nervousness in the last 10 minutes was because we didn't finish the game well and didn't score the goals.

"We can't have 12 chances in every game. We need to score more goals and that's about practice and skills. It's also about getting confidence.

"We are winning games, which is positive. We have a good mood in the group, it's a good atmosphere. We're working every day to improve and I see signs every day that we're getting somewhere but we are not there yet, it's a lot of work still."

After two successive second placed finishes in the Premiership, Motherwell have struggled this season and sit in 10th place just two points off the bottom.

Caretaker manager Kenny Black, who has been in charge since Stuart McCall resigned in October, says he still believes Motherwell are strong enough to avoid relegation if they can stop giving away avoidable goals.

"We keep giving away silly goals and goals we think can be prevented," Black said.

"I certainly think there's a strength there to avoid relegation. However, the fact is we're in the relegation area just now.

"It's okay talking about it but whoever comes in has got a group of players who are hurting at the fact that their performances haven't been as good as they would have liked.

"We have a number of games coming up against teams that are around us in the league and it is up to us to do our talking on the park."