Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers was delighted to see the strength of his squad pay off as Luke McCowan netted amid the absence of the injured Callum McGregor in a 3-0 win at Motherwell.
Goals from stand-in skipper Alistair Johnston and substitute Adam Idah helped Rodgers to by far his most comfortable victory at Fir Park, a ground where he had dropped points three times and seen his side net stoppage-time winners three times during six visits.
Motherwell midfielder Lennon Miller hit both a post and the bar before McCowan opened the scoring with an 18-yard drive after opening up space himself to shoot.
“I’m so happy for him,” Rodgers said. “As a Celtic supporter coming in, maybe there’s that enthusiasm first of all, but then that wears off.
“But he performs with great energy, a great passion for the game, and he has quality. Callum obviously wasn’t going to play, so the idea was to bring him in because he’s a goal threat, and I thought he was going to do really well.
“You see that in every game he plays, he looks like he can create goals or score a goal.”
Rodgers made four changes in all following the midweek draw with Atalanta.
“We were able to rest Arne (Engels), who’s come in as a young player and played so many games, the distance he covered in midweek was huge,” he said. “I’m obviously very grateful to the club for getting the players in that allows us to do that.”
Cameron Carter-Vickers made his comeback from injury off the bench while McGregor is a doubt for the midweek visit of Dundee with a hip strain but is expected to be fit for Saturday’s Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Aberdeen.
“It shouldn’t be too serious,” Rodgers said. “It was really mature, because maybe before he might not have mentioned it. He had a wee feeling after the training session.
“Rather than take any risk with it, we didn’t want to put him on to maybe stretch it and then be out for a number of weeks. So, hopefully he’ll be fine over these next few days, and if not Wednesday, then hopefully he should be fine for next weekend.”
Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell felt the game hinged on some missed chances for his team and a break of the ball for McCowan.
“I thought the first quarter of the game we were excellent, carved out a number of good opportunities, hit the woodwork a couple of times, and looked pretty comfortable,” he said.
“We have to capitalise on those chances when they come along. I think we did well to carve them out.
“Celtic got the goal which I thought was a bit fortuitous. I know you make your own luck in this game but there was a wee bit of a ricochet for McCowan to get through and then he finishes it well.
“Up until the point of the Celtic second goal, we felt we were well in the game. I felt we were in a place we needed to be and then the second goal is a killer blow.”
Kettlewell felt Liam Gordon’s VAR-assisted stoppage-time red card for a lunging tackle on Idah was “harsh”. The defender will miss Motherwell’s next two league games but not their semi-final against Rangers, as all suspensions for red cards are now competition specific.
Kettlewell said: “The first thing you see on a screen is still images and it looks bad, of course.
“I spoke to the referee after it in a calm fashion just to ask what he saw in the challenge. He spoke about hinging the Celtic player’s ankle but my counter argument to that is your talking about Liam Gordon at full stretch at that point not really with any force whatsoever trying to get a toe-end on the ball.
“I acknowledge he doesn’t get that toe-end on the ball which I thought he did at the time but I don’t think he’s come in with any reckless intent or trying to injure the Celtic player.”
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