Brendan Rodgers wasn’t satisfied with Celtic’s performance in the Scottish Cup quarter final win over Livingston, telling his players they didn’t meet the ‘different standards’ that apply when you play for the club.

Daizen Maeda’s hat-trick eventually helped the cup holders see off a brave Livi outfit, but while Rodgers was pleased with how his team dug deep to get themselves to Hampden, he was less than impressed by the overall level of their display.

The Celtic manager conceded that his team were hampered by the absence of key men like captain Callum McGregor and Cameron Carter-Vickers, but felt the need to serve a reminder to his players that he expects better from them.

“This is a club where the standards are different,” Rodgers said.

“There are lots of teams who we will hear 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 the 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 (Kuhn) 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. So, credit to the players for that. They dug in and kept fighting.

“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 [what we wanted] and the speed of our game wasn’t what we wanted.

“I understand it. Some of the guys coming in haven’t played a lot recently and there is a level of player missing.

“They fought to the end and the scoreline looked more comfortable than it was. I’m happy to be in the hat.”

Rodgers’ main concern in the performance of his team lay in the cheap goals they conceded, and he is hoping that the hamstring issue that kept Carter-Vickers out of the Livingston match won’t result in a long lay-off.

“We were just going through something very light on Saturday and he felt something in the back of his leg,” he said.

“He was okay to continue training, but we just didn’t want to take any risk whatsoever with him.

“As much as he wants to play every game and be there, we had this earlier in the season when he said he was okay, but we ended up losing him for a number of matches.

“Hopefully it’s nothing too serious. We just have to wait and see. If players are fit and available then we can’t stop him going, that’s internationals. He’ll obviously be called up for the USA I’m sure, but we’ll just have to wait and see what the scan result says.

“Hopefully, fingers crossed, it will be nothing serious, because we weren’t doing anything serious.

“It was light, it was just a pass and he felt it, but we’ll see what the result is.

“They are poor goals [we lose], they’re poor goals. I think you see whenever Cam is not in the team – with the greatest of respect – the security in the team.

“So, no, we weren’t very good at dealing with that I felt, and the goals were on us. We give away poor goals.

“We give the ball away, and with the first one, the first, second and third ball we didn’t get around it and then we are moving as the ball is getting played behind us.

“So, that’s not great from our perspective, but we were obviously good going forward.

“When you have the level of players missing that you then don’t have that same security.

“I don’t have any fears when we have those guys back. I just think there’s a moment in any team when you are missing your best players then you will maybe not be as tight as you want to be.

“That is natural, but what is important is that you still have that threat and dynamism going forward.

“Ok, we conceded not great goals today, and that is on us. But we still scored four and could have had a few more.”