Ange Postecoglou yesterday won his second of three semi-finals at Hampden and hailed his players for winning the battle in atrocious conditions at the National Stadium. Kilmarnock showed no lack of desire or ambition and you might be wondering why they don’t play that style of football more often, rather than their usual parking the bus stuff we see everything they play Celtic in the Scottish Premiership, with last weekend’s match at Celtic Park being the perfect example of that.

Still after the hard-found battle ended in a well deserved 2-0 win for Ange Postecoglou’s side the Celtic manager had every reason to be pleased having anticipated a tougher match this week against Derek McInnes’ side.

“It was always going to be that way, it’s a cup semi-final and credit to Kilmarnock, they threw everything at us, as you would expect in such a big game,” the Celtic manager said.

“The conditions made it tough for it to be too open and free-flowing, but fair credit to the lads, they found a way again. They had to battle, but that’s okay, we can battle with the best of them and I thought they did that today.

“In these kind of competitions you don’t expect the opposition to lay down at any point and we didn’t expect that today. We expected a tough game and that’s what we got.

“But, as I said, they key to that is that we overcome that and the boys did that. We want to be a team that’s relentless in our pursuit of success. It’s demanded at this football club and again the boys delivered when it mattered.

“The conditions, the pitch, it wasn’t great for us to play our football, it made it really difficult, but, as I said, we spoke about that before the game, and if we need to battle this out, we’ll battle it out. What’s important that once the game’s done and dusted, were in the final.”

Here are Ange’s post-match interviews from yesterday’s 2-0 win over Kilmarnock in the League Cup semi-final…

🗣️ “For us, this year is about trying to win every game of football we play”@CelticFC manager Ange Postecoglou discusses a range of topics with @Sports_EmmaD, @JohnHartson10 and Ally McCoist after the final whistle 🟢#CELKIL | #ViaplayCup pic.twitter.com/l4WtVadJov

— Viaplay Sports UK (@ViaplaySportsUK) January 14, 2023