Brendan Rodgers delighted to see Celtic’s commitment to press pay off

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers was delighted to see his team’s willingness to press bear fruit in such an obvious manner when Nicolas Kuhn netted their third goal in a 3-1 victory over Hibernian.

Daizen Maeda scored two well-worked goals early on as Celtic set up a Premier Sports Cup quarter-final meeting with Falkirk.

The third Celtic goal was a calamity for Hibs, but Rodgers was thrilled with the way his side put the visitors under pressure from a short goal-kick.

Maeda’s pressing unnerved Marvin Ekpiteta and the defender’s loose pass to Josef Bursik was chased by Kuhn, who charged down the goalkeeper’s attempted pass and saw it ricochet into the net.

While it was not a classic Celtic goal, it was further evidence of the choreographed pressing that Rodgers has been working on this summer.

“That’s a massive part of how we work. Because if you’ve got that defensive attitude, that creates the rhythm for you when you have the ball,” he said. “So, I’m so pleased with that, how we stayed on it.

“And it’s a brave mentality, but the players have that now and you see them very offensive, even when they haven’t got the ball.

“We’ll always have someone pressing a goalkeeper and that’s your reward for doing it.”

Rodgers was delighted with his side’s tempo throughout the game.

“The compass for you as a manager in terms of the direction your team is going is judged on every day in training,” he added.

“You see the hunger, you see the mentality and if it’s not there, you’ve got to drive it and you’ve got to keep pushing.

“Thankfully, the players here from the first day coming back in pre-season, they’ve had that mentality. There are so many players who have been here before and won titles, but they have that humility and the hunger to go again.

“That has been with us and evident right the way through pre-season.

“They are really now understanding what I want 100 per cent. The catalyst for us was our counter-pressing.

“I said before that would trigger off lots for us, because we were going to have a lot of the ball, we were going to be attacking, making all different types of runs, but when it breaks down, can we be there in our numbers to win the ball back? We saw that countless times, which was great.”