Kyogo remains brilliant as multiple Celtic options in attack laid out by pumped-up Brendan Rodgers

Brendan Rodgers has hailed Joe Hart as one of his big leaders helping Celtic dodge the flak to remain in the trophy hunt.

The Hoops boss has saluted the mental strength of his squad for seeing off St Mirren in the Scottish Cup and making it eight wins and a draw out of nine games despite his squad suffering injuries to key men. Rodgers reckons no.1 Hart has played a vital role with vital saves of late to secure a point at Aberdeen and victory at Hibs – with another solid show against Saints.

The 75-times capped England star was required to make a brilliant stop to keep out a spectacular Alex Gogic overhead kick and deal with a first half aerial bombardment in Paisley. Hart came out on top to make it six Celtic clean sheets in nine games and Rodgers reckons his shot stopper and captain Callum McGregor have been the driving forces behind shutting out the pressure piled on the Parkhead men.

The Hoops boss said: “Joe doesn’t have a lot to do but the times he does he makes wonderful saves. He’s a real catalyst for the team with the way him and Cal lead the dressing room. The saves he makes are so impressive. There were lots of crosses the other day, lots of balls into the box. But he was very clean. You always want keepers to catch but if they can’t then there’s lot of distance on it. He did that very well more than a few times.

“It was another clean sheet for him and that was important. Joe’s a very experienced player. But we control the voice of the team inside the changing room. Listen, there are lots of opinions in the game, which is fair enough. But we’ll control our own inner voice, as they say, and that’s something that allows you to get the wins and get the qualification like Sunday. But we have to keep going. There