EUR HAVING A LAFF
Kyle stunner puts heat on Rodgers for trip to Greece
BRENDAN Rodgers gambled and lost. Only the next 72 hours will tell him whether it was worth it.
At least he has 36 more games to recover the three points it cost him today. There are no doggy lives for losing to AEK Athens on Tuesday.
But what he’ll have learned – and presumably his board got the memo – is that his ‘B’ team is no longer deep enough or good enough to see off a Hearts team who announced themselves as a seriously potent force in this season’s race.
Kyle Lafferty’s 56th minute goal – a sweet volley from the edge of the area – was all that separated the teams in a wonderful war of attrition at Tynecastle, but there is no question Craig Levein’s side were value for their place at the top of the table.
And the Hearts boss admitted they sensed blood in the water when they saw a Hoops teamsheet missing five sure starters.
Levein said: “I don’t know what he thought, but Brendan (below) had serious decisions to make. The Champions League is worth a hell of a lot more money to them than beating Hearts in a league game.
“I’m absolutely positive he was confident he could do both. So he did make changes and it was another thing, along with our form and recent performances here against Celtic.
“There were enough postive thoughts for us to go into the game absolutely believing we had a chance of winning – that was evident by the last 10 minutes of the match, how manfully we defended. It proved we can be competitive and we edged it.”
Against a backdrop of disquiet over unfulfilled ambition and question marks over the absent Dedryck Boyata’s future, Celtic left £9m striker Odsonne Edouard, James Forrest, Tom Rogic and Olivier Ntcham on the bench, with Kris Ajer another starter rested ahead of his Euro suspension.
They were tortured by ex-cambridge United striker Uche Ikpeazu and controlled in the middle of the park by a relegated Austrian League centre-half turned midfielder in Peter Haring. Rodgers saw the writing on the wall and before 70 minutes were out, he’d brought on Edouard, Forrest and then Rogic. Rodgers admitted: “It was a close game. We coped with the physicality very well but you don’t expect to give the ball away in your build up play. Under no pressure we give it away and in fairness to Lafferty it was a really, really good finish. “We still had some time to create problems but we never really were clean enough in the final third. Congratulations to Hearts, we have to lick our wounds and move on.”