Venus insists Hoops ready for Cappielow

The Hoops travel to Cappielow for a fourth-round tie that has already been postponed twice due to the big freeze.

Celtic's injury woes have increased in the meantime, with Scott McDonald, Stephen McManus, Danny Fox and Ki Sung-Yeung joining Scott Brown and Shaun Maloney on the sidelines.

They are also not in the best form, having won only one of their last five games in all competitions. But assistant manager Venus said: "We're ready for the game. We've got X amount of footballers at the football club, we want the game to be on.

"There are no excuses at all."

Venus, who was also Tony Mowbray's right-hand man at Hibernian between 2004 and 2006, admits Cappielow will be "a little bit foreign" for some of Celtic's players. I've not been to Morton since I was last in Scotland," he said. "It's an old-fashioned stadium, it should have an old-fashioned cup atmosphere, which should be good. Players should enjoy playing the games. I used to enjoy it and I hope they do."