Cameron Carter-Vickers reflected on the frustrations within the Celtic camp after the game at Tynecastle was turned on its head by two outrageously “incompetent” VAR calls by John Beaton. But the Celtic defender refuses to let that dampen the Celtic desire to retain the title this season.
As reported by STV, the American Internationalist said that it was a disappointing result but the performance was one that the team can be proud of.
“It was obviously difficult (going down to 10 men). It was disappointing that we didn’t get the result that we wanted to.
“But, all in all, I think we can be proud of the performance that we gave. We created a lot of chances, even when we went down to 10 men.
“So, yeah, I think there are a lot of positives that we can take from it. Whether we won that game or not, what we have to do for the rest of the season is pretty clear. We will just focus on that.”
Two decisions massively impacted upon the result of the match – the first after 16 minutes was to overturn the on-field decision to book Yang for a high boot on Alex Cochrane and send the South Korean winger off, who had just days previous earned MOTM against Dundee. The next came just before half-time when Tomoki Iwata was penalised for a handball that he didn’t know about and the Hearts players/fans didn’t even shout for.
CCV wasn’t prepared to dwell on the implications of these decisions going against Celtic as we enter the tight title race but admitted that they could play a part.
“They could do, but we can’t let our focus go on to that,” he said. “We have just got to focus on our own performance.
“Even when we went down to 10 men, we created a good few chances. We probably would have liked to have stopped them from scoring a second. That is all we can focus on.
“As long as we keep improving and getting better we will be all right.”
Carter-Vickers will likely continue with the armband in the absence of Callum McGregor, who is out with a calf/achilles injury. The Scottish Champions will look to seal a place at Hampden by putting relegation-threatened Livingston to the sword in the Scottish Cup Quarter Final on Sunday.
