Liam Scales believes Celtic must put their Tynecastle anger behind them as they prepare to face Livingston this weekend.
Celtic suffered a rare 2-0 loss versus Hearts last Sunday but the Scottish Premiership holders had to get through the majority of the clash with ten men because of Hyun-Jun Yang's red card. VAR also awarded their opponents a penalty for handball which Scales reckons wasn't clear or obvious.
Asked if he and his teammates understand the current rules around handball, he said: "Some might. Im not, to be honest. It surprised me. Watching it back especially. No one on the pitch even knew it had happened. Tomoki (Iwata) didn’t even know until half-time that it was given against him. It might have even been given against Ali (Johnston). I’m not sure myself, but it was surprising. That’s football."
READ MORE: Scales names Iwata as a leader in McGregor's absence
The Hoops defender knows it won't be a walk in the park for Celtic as he conceded that their Scottish Cup quarter-final counterparts are notoriously hard to break down.
He recalled: “It’s a cup game and it’s coming towards the end of the competition so we’re looking forward to it and hopefully putting in a good performance which will take us through to the semi-final.
“It’s the business end of the season and these games are coming up. We’ve had a good week working on our game for the weekend and we’re confident going into it, and we just want to progress to the next round.'
“I think Livington might be a bit cautious. They’ll be hard to break down more than opening up because they’ll want to stay in the game and keep it going for as long as they can.”
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here