Callum McGregor Celtic return timeline predicted by Brendan Rodgers as boss has 'fingers crossed' for key date

Brendan Rodgers warned his Celtic stars they need to put on a show rather than simply grinding out wins.

The Hoops boss admitted his injury hit side – who have injury concerns over Callum McGregor and Cameron Carter-Vickers – had to dig in to finally see off Livingston with a couple of late goals to reach the Scottish Cup semis. But Rodgers insisted he won’t be happy for his men to just scrape their way for the rest of the season.

He said: “This is a club where the standards are different. There are lots of teams who will here about grinding out results and finding a way to win. That doesn’t apply to Celtic – because it’s about the standard and level of performance. That is always the demand here. I understand when you have players missing you might not always find that level.

“But you have to win in the meantime. The guys managed to do that. We will go into there remaining games in the league and Scottish Cup with the aim of performing well – because I believe when we perform to our highest level we have a great chance of winning games. But if you can’t quite get to that level, for whatever reason, you still have to win.

“The players deserve credit for that. Some of them haven’t played a lot. Matt O’Riley wasn’t well all week, Stephen Welsh came in at the last minute, Nicolas coming in after not featuring. There was a little bit of disruption there, but the guys got the job done in the end. It wasn’t the performances we wanted but we got into the semi-finals, which was great.

“Also credit to Livingston. It’s been a difficult season for them but they came here and made it really difficult. We didn’t close the spaces anywhere near and the speed of our game wasn’t what we wanted. I understand it. Some of the guys