Hayes: I’ll never forgive myself for botched pass to pal Kenny
it was great to do that. But we lost a goal far too soon. If we’d managed to hold out for another five or 10 minutes it would have relaxed us a bit more.
“But we let them score straight away and that got them back in the game.
“We had more chances after that to take the lead again but we just couldn’t put the ball in the net.
“We played well but I don’t think that was the best we’ve played against Celtic this season.
“I actually felt we were better in the last league match, even though we went 3- 0 down in that one early on. That night we played really well.
“When you play Celtic you have to play a certain way and in the League Cup Final we learned that the hard way.
“You can’t let them have time on the ball so we tried a different approach a few weeks ago and bar the first 10 minutes it worked. So we tried to do the same again, went toe to toe with the best team in the country by far and almost got a result.”
Hayes’s desire to give his all to the bitter end saw him play through the pain after tweaking his hamstring in the second half.
He said: “My hamstring was a bit tight. I’ve been having it patched up for a while and was probably a bit self ish here because I didn’t want to come off in a cup final.
“The physio gave me stuff to rub on it a couple of times. It numbs the pain and it has worked for me before.
“I would have stayed on too. The manager had said to me to get mentally ready for extra time but then they hit us with the sucker punch.”