Celtic reaction: Cameron Carter-Vickers scan after twinge, 'standards are different', Livingston pride

Manager admits Celtic weren’t at their best and gives update on key centre-half

Brendan Rodgers admitted he was happier with the result than the performance as Celtic squeezed past Livingston 4-2 to book their place in the Scottish Cup semi-finals.

A Daizen Maeda hat-trick and a late fourth goal from Kyogo Furuhashi eventually ended the visitors’ resistance but Rodgers acknowledged his team, missing a number of key figures including Cameron Carter-Vickers and Callum McGregor, never really hit top gear.

“It wasn’t the performances we wanted but we got into the semi-finals which was great,” said the manager. “So credit to the players for that. They dug in and kept fighting. This is a club where the standards are different. There are lots of teams who you’ll hear about grinding out results and finding a way to win. That doesn’t apply to Celtic – because it’s about the standard and level of performance. That is always the demand here. I understand when you have players missing you might not always find that level. But you have to win in the meantime. The guys managed to do that.”

Livingston manager David Martindale (left) embraces Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers after the Scottish Cup clash at Celtic Park.

Rodgers remained hopeful that Carter-Vickers would be back sooner rather than later after being rested following a hamstring twinge. “We’ll just have to wait and see what the scan result says,” he added. “Hopefully, fingers crossed, it will be nothing serious. We were just going through something very light and he felt something in the back of his leg. He was okay to continue training but we just didn’t want to take any risk whatsoever with him.”

Livingston contributed substantially to the tie, scoring two terrific equalisers through Daniel Mackay and Tete Yengi only for Celtic to thwart them at the death. It left manager David Martindale wondering what might have been had Michael Nottingham scored to put his team ahead. “It’s a huge save [from Joe Hart] in the game which potentially could’ve seen it going 3-2 for us,” he lamented. “It kept Celtic in the game. Our players put a lot into the game and I find it hard to be too critical. I’m pretty proud of them today albeit we’re out of the cup.”