Brendan Rodgers admits potentially annoying Celtic’s Eboue Kouassi

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Eboue Kouassi was replaced during the first-half of Celtic’s Scottish League Cup semi-final victory.

Brendan Rodgers told BT Sport’s live post-match coverage of Celtic’s League Cup semi-final win over Hearts (broadcast on 28/10 from 12:45) that he may have annoyed Eboue Kouassi by replacing him at Murrayfield, but added that his decision was vindicated.

Kouassi was handed a rare start in the middle of the park for the Hoops as they looked to make another domestic final at the expense of the current Scottish Premiership leaders.

Unfortunately, it was another frustrating afternoon for the £3 million signing – fee reported by STV – as he was replaced after just 26 minutes. The substitution appeared to be inspired by an incident which saw Kouassi seemingly land awkwardly as he brought the ball down. He was subsequently limping for a while before gradually beginning to run normally again.

By the time he was substituted for Scott Sinclair, he seemed to have managed to have shaken off the knock. And his disappointment at being replaced hinted that he felt that he was fine to carry on.

Rodgers admitted that he may have possibly annoyed the midfielder with his decision, but felt that his call was vindicated as Celtic booked their place in the final.

“He looks as if he’d hyperextended his knee in a challenge and I think he was trying to run it off. And he was getting a little bit better but it’s the semi-final of the cup, you can’t afford to take any risks,” he told BT Sport, when asked about Kouassi’s reaction.

“Hearts are a very good side, they’ve got good players, they had numbers on the inside of the field so we always have to make sure that we’ve got that energy on the inside.

“And everyone is fit so I have options to look at it and put Callum back into the controlling position and bring Scotty on, and it worked well for us. So whether he likes it or not, it’s just unfortunate, you have to make a decision and like I say, it helped us.”

It certainly did prove to be the right call. Sinclair was fantastic in the 3-0 win and any damage to Kouassi’s knee would have been limited ahead of a tricky run of three fixtures in eight days – that includes a league game against Hearts and the Europa League rematch with RB Leipzig.