Celtic hat-trick hero Leigh Griffiths will let his goals do the talking in his bid for a regular start under manager Ronny Deila.

As a consequence of the Norwegian continuing to rotate his attacking players, the on-form 24-year-old striker was left out of the starting line-up for the visit of Kilmarnock on Wednesday night despite scoring in the 1-1 draw at Inverness at the weekend.

Griffiths' response when coming off the bench around the hour mark, immediately after Kris Commons had levelled Darryl Westlake's shock opener for the Ayrshire men, was three goals in a 19-minute spell to secure a 4-1 win and take the Hoops eight points clear of Aberdeen at the top of the Scottish Premiership with six games remaining.

It took Griffiths' total to 15 for the season so far, 11 of which have come this year.

And it is a far cry from early in the campaign when he was on the fringes at Parkhead - he did not feature at all last September - and linked with an emergency loan move to Hibernian, with whom he had two loan spells before signing for Celtic from Wolves in January 2014.

But the former Livingston and Dundee player said: "I don't have to prove anything.

"I was brought to score goals and thankfully since the turn of the year I have started to do that.

"It is only my third hat-trick in football. I scored my second hat-trick last season for Celtic against Inverness.

"I want a run of games. I want to be starting every game from now to the end of the season and try to hit as many goals as I can.

"But the manager will select the team he thinks will go out and win the game. We have boys on the bench - against Kilmarnock we had me, Anthony Stokes, Gary Mackay-Steven and Stuart Armstrong - guys who can all come on and change the game for us."

It was timely intervention by Griffiths who is now looking forward to the William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final against Inverness at Hampden Park on Sunday.

Ninth-place Killie spent the first-half simply defending before Westlake's deflected drive five minutes after the break threatened, if only for eight minutes or so, a classic smash and grab victory.

"We suffered a minor set back by going 1-0 down but the boys hit back right away," said the Parkhead forward.

"My first goal came from a good ball into the box and I managed to head it downwards into the goal.

"The second one was a shot in off the post and with the third one, I was just waiting on the whistle to go for offside but thankfully it never came and I put it back across the goalkeeper.

"But it was good to get the win because we were disappointed not to get the win at the weekend."