Cameron Carter-Vickers helped seal our spot in another Hampden Semi-final showdown this year and had an all-round brilliant performance on Saturday at Tyncastle. The big American defender has been resolute at the Celtic defensive backline since he walked into the club and has forged a really strong partnership with Swede, Carl Starfelt.

At the weekend we had thought it would be a difficult task to navigate following our history with Hearts, our earlier game at Tyncastle in October, and the fact it was a Scottish Cup tie. The salient facts are that we strolled it just as we did last Wednesday night at Celtic Park before the big one. It was just as comprehensive if not more so, as we put Robbie Neilson’s men through the ringer once again.

Cam was a picture of authority yet again, pushing people off of the ball, getting stuck in, and marshalling his defensive line too. Even when his regular partner Starfelt was removed through an unforseen injury, he didn’t waver in his quest to help the Hoops keep a clean sheet and cruise into the next round at the business end of the season.

On the match and his goal to make it 3-0, the USA international said: “It’s a long time, but I’ve said before, it’s not something that I’m desperate to do – score goals, obviously being a defender first and foremost, but when I can help the team, I try to. It’s always good to score goals and it was the first of the season for me, so I was happy.”

The Bhoys play a brand of football that is to the for at times; swashbuckling and stylish but ultimately, with the results to back it up, just as Ange Postecoglou promised when he joined from Yokohama F. Marinos in Asia. Cam has a fantastic view of it all as he sits behind the attacking elements of our team most of the time and the central defender couldn’t be more happy with what he witnesses on a weekly basis. He said: “It’s good, but to be honest, I’m not watching too much, I trying to stay concentrated in case they counter.

“But it’s definitely good, some of the football we play is unbelievable and I’ve got a great view of it. I thought it was a good performance I thought we started very well, maybe lost control of the game a little bit midway through the first half, but for the majority of the game we played well and dominated the game. We were aware that when you come to places like this, you’ve got to start well and try to quieten the crowd as much as possible, and I thought we did that today. I enjoyed the game, as a team we played well and you always want to play in atmospheres like this and get the win.”

A central cog in the Celtic machine since his arrival from Tottenham Hotspur in the English Premier League, Cameron has helped steer us through this challenging week which saw us playing three very trying matches in a short space of time. It had the potential to be a banana skin week or so this one but the squad has managed to pull together and find that magic and gritty determination needed to win silverware. As we have done in the past and throughout this whole season, we haven’t looked any further than the next game and looked to improve with each passing week.

It’s been a hallmark of this current Hoops team and Carter-Vickers mentioned after the game once again. He added: “I think that’s our goal, the manager is always on at us that no matter how well we play before the game, that he wants us to improve in the next performance. It the kind of message that the group has taken to really well and we’ll constantly try to improve. We are a very focused group, and we’re always trying to improve so we look forward to every game we play and we just want to go out there and perform the best we can.”