Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers believes that it was an awful decision from the referee to send midfielder Callum McGregor off in the second half in their 3-0 win over Hamilton.

The Scottish champions were presented with a problem in the second half at New Douglas Park when midfielder McGregor was given his marching orders after he picked up a second yellow card.




While Celtic were leading the game at the time through Leigh Griffiths’ 41st minute strike, there was still more than 40 odd minutes left on the clock for Hamilton to stage a comeback.

Rodgers has insisted that it was a terrible decision to send off the young midfielder as there was no intent in the challenge and it didn’t deserve a second booking.
 


The Celtic manager said on the BBC's Sportsound: "We were presented with a challenge going down to 10 men for the first time this season, which I thought was an awful decision by the referee.  

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"Know your player, for one, and then he needs a bit of help from his linesman.

"Callum McGregor just jumps forward, his momentum takes him forward, he doesn’t have his foot up, and of course the player goes over.

"So to give him a second booking for that was a really, really bad decision.

"The kid is hugely disappointed, but there's no fault of his on that one.”

The Bhoys boss was pleased with the way his players responded to the crisis and put their work on the training ground into practice in order to get three points from a tricky fixture.

Despite being a man down, Stuart Armstrong doubled Celtic’s lead in the 54th minute and Moussa Dembele added a third towards the end to make it a comfortable afternoon for the Scottish champions.

Rodgers added: "We went 4-3-2, still kept the shape of the team much the same, and we put on an extra striker, so that allowed us to block lines of passing, shift defensively, but always gave us a threat attacking-wise.

"We worked on that over the course of pre-season but that’s been the first time it’s come into play, and the players deserve credit, we got a third goal and maybe could’ve had more."

Celtic opened up a 14-point gap over Rangers in second and still have a game in hand.