Forrest refuses to wage turf war
JAMES Forrest refused to blame Celtic’s off-colour showing at Kilmarnock on Saturday on the artificial Rugby Park pitch.
The Parkhead side lost domestically for only the second time under Brendan Rodgers in Ayrshire, losing central defenders Dedryck Boyata and Kristoffer Ajer to injury in the process, with Jozo Simunovic not risked on the controversial synthetic surface.
But the Scotland winger said there were no excuses for Celtic’s inability to test Kilmarnock goalkeeper Jamie MacDonald until the dying minutes – Rodgers said Celtic could have played ‘until midnight’ and not scored – and the Parkhead side got what they deserved.
“We don’t want to make excuses,” he said.
“We have played on this pitch a few times before and we’ve won.
“We know what it’s like and we’re not going to blame the pitch. I know it is difficult but you can say it is the same for both teams.
“The Kilmarnock pitch is a bit better than Hamilton’s. Obviously, it’s not ideal but we have come here and won before but we didn’t manage to do that today.
“From start to finish we weren’t good enough,” Forrest added.
“We got what we deserved and we just need to show a bit of character now to come back from this.
“We started actually all right, for the first 10 minutes, but then the couple of boys going off maybe changed the way the game was going, but we don’t have any excuses.
“The better team won and we just need to make sure we get a positive result next week in the Cup.”