Scotland will miss Brendan Rodgers says Hearts boss Craig Levein

Hearts manager Craig Levein says Celtic will be just as tough to beat without Brendan Rodgers. Picture: SNS.

But while he recognises the appeal of life in the English Premier League, the Tynecastle manager remains focused on his Scottish Premiership ambitions and is hoping the fact that tonight’s opponents are in a state of managerial flux will help his players get back to winning ways.

“Since he’s come into Celtic, he’s done everything he could possibly do, domestically,” he said of the man he had expected to be facing up to this evening. “So it’s quite a tall order for whoever comes in behind him, to match that level of success.

“I think having him here was great for the game. His previous job was Liverpool, where he nearly won the Premier League. He did a fantastic job there, has done a fantastic job at Celtic – so he’s a high-profile manager and the more high-profile managers we have in the league, the better it is for Scotland. He’s a decent fella, too, so he will be missed. I wish him good luck.

“From my own point of view, it was good to come up against his teams – and good for Scottish football.

“Without speaking to Brendan, I don’t know what his motivation is. But, I think if Celtic played in the Premier League in England, he probably would have stayed. That’s basically it. Because you could argue that the Premier League is the biggest league in the world.”

The news that he will be replaced, on an interim basis at the moment, by Levein’s former derby counterpart Neil Lennon, was greeted as good news by the Gorgie manager who is happy to see his old nemesis back in the game so soon after his Easter Road departure, but he doesn’t believe it will impact one way or the other on this evening’s fixture.

“It would be good to see him back in so quickly. I get on well with him. Good for him. He knows the club,” said Levein.

“They’ve got good players and they’ve got a way of playing so I don’t see anything changing. Brendan’s signed players over the last three years to play in a certain manner. To do anything different, be more direct, is going to take a different style of player. So I think they will do the same thing.

“They are on a good run just now so their momentum and belief is quite high at the moment. We are still preparing to play against a really good Celtic side and we need to be at our best and keep our foot to the floor as long as we possibly can. I’m not going to change anything. Obviously there is a little bit of a hiccup because Brendan is not going to be there. But Celtic will just be the same as they were going to be under Brendan.”

That could present a problem to Hearts, unless they can recapture the form they showed back in August, when they bettered the Parkhead side at Tynecastle and gave the double treble winners something to chase down in the league. It also offered Hearts’ summer signings a glimpse of how good things could be in front of a buoyant sellout crowd at Tynecastle, according to midfielder Olly Lee.

“The game against them in August was a real welcome to Tynecastle for all the new boys,” said Lee. “It was rocking and it was one of my favourite days since coming to the club. Hopefully we can get back to that and kick on to the end of the season.

“People are talking about [Rodgers leaving] in the Hearts dressing room and saying ‘what’s going on?’ But it’s important that we keep the focus on what we do. We can’t control whether Brendan Rodgers is Celtic manager or not. There’s no way to know whether that would be better for us or worse. We just need to go into the game looking forward to it, at a packed-out Tynecastle, and try to get the win.”