PLAYED 70 LOST 1
Rodgers hails Celts for record run in a Tynecastle huddle and tells them to start again
BRENDAN RODGERS last night insisted his squad should be proud of their record-breaking run after Hearts ended the Invincibles.
The Celtic boss admitted his men were second best in yesterday’s Tynecastle drubbing as the Jambos ran amok in the capital to bring the Parkhead club’s 69-match unbeaten charge to a shuddering halt.
Rodgers refused to slaughter his men for the Gorgie gubbing though as he insisted Celts can hold their heads high.
He said: “My feeling is of pride in the players. That’s the run of 69 games come to an end but it was a real historical achievement.
“I thanked them. To go undefeated for 69 games, whatever level it is, whatever competition, it’s a remarkable achievement.
“The players will go down in history because I don’t think it will be done again. But it’s in the past now and one of the key things in success is looking forward.”
Rodgers rallied his players in a huddle on the Tynecastle pitch after the 4-0 hammering and saluted the supporters.
The Hoops boss vowed Celtic will take the defeat on the chin and look to kickstart another run.
He said: “It was always going to happen. I’ve said many times, the players are only human and it was always going to happen. It’s never nice when it does.
“I wanted to pull the players together and tell them Hearts were better than us today and we have to accept it.
“But what they have done is truly amazing. They need to use this feeling that we haven’t felt for 18 months as a lever moving forward.
“Let’s learn and get better for it. We have to accept we are a bigger target now because of what we’ve done but let’s go on and win our next game.
“We will be fine. We will recover. It was great support from the supporters at the end. I think they recognise what we’ve achieved over the last 18 months. But we’ll now hit the reset button.”
Rodgers admitted his side were well off the pace at Tynecastle. He said: “We made too many mistakes to get anything out of it.
“We put a bit of risk into the second half when we were 2-0 down and went all out but we lost poor goals.
“The players gave their all to the end but the mistakes cost us. It’s the first domestic game where we haven’t scored but we could have played five games today and not scored.
“Defensively we struggled. The pitch wasn’t so great so Hearts played a direct game, which is fine but we failed to cope with Kyle Lafferty in that first period. He gave our centre-halves problems.
“Congratulations to Hearts. They were the better team. We failed to cope with their style in the first half in particular. We didn’t defend well enough. But Hearts deserved to win the game.”