Celtic huffed and puffed their way to a win over Livingston in the Scottish Cup yesterday in a performance that didn’t leave Brendan Rodgers completely satisfied.
The 4-2 scoreline looks impressive enough, but as all Celtic fans know, Livingston drew level twice and were unfortunate to go ahead if it hadn’t been for another Joe Hart point-blank save.
Brendan Rodgers was pretty honest about his team’s performance against David Martindale’s side.
The Celtic boss said that whilst he was happy with the win and to progress in the competition, he felt that his team ‘didn’t play well’ and were just ‘okay in patches’. And it was a view that left BBC duo Richard Gordon and Pat Bonner surprised.
BBC duo thought Celtic were ‘bright’ vs Livingston
Richard Gordon was the first to react after he said that he felt it was the best he’d seen Celtic play over the course of the season.
Gordon said [BBC Sportsound], “That’s quite interesting Pat. I thought Celtic were actually brighter today than I’ve seen them many times over the course of the season but he clearly feels they should have been better.”
And Bonner replied, “Yeah, it’s an interesting take on it. I thought they were much brighter in the forward areas. Especially the wide areas.”
I have to say I think Rodgers has played down the performance as well. Aside from the finishing and the poor defending at Livingston’s equalisers, I felt Celtic looked dangerous every time they ventured into Livingston’s final third.
Nicolas Kuhn was impressive and for a winger to get a hat trick shows just how determined the forwards were to get into goalscoring opportunities.
If Celtic got their act together in front of goal, the game would have been finished inside the first 20 minutes.
But because they didn’t Livingston grew in confidence and, well, we saw how it went from there.
The good thing is that we are still in the competition. And if we beat St Johnstone on Saturday, we go back to the top of the league, albeit for 24 hours should Rangers win away to Dundee on Sunday.
In other news, PFA Scotland CEO shares opinion on how Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers handled John Beaton situation
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